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THIS WORLD OF OURS 
J. H. CURLE 



THIS WORLD 
OF OURS 



BY 



J. H. CURLE 

▲¥THOR. OF "THE SHADOW SHOW," BTC. 




NEW ^My YORK 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 






COPYRIGHT, I92I, 
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 






PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 



©C!.AGlla91 

^0 I 



^ 



Out of the golden remote wild west where 

the sea without shore is, 
Full of the sunset, and sad, if at all, 

with the fulness of joy, 
As a wind sets in with the autumn that 

blows from the region of stories. 
Blows with a perfume of songs and of 

memories beloved as a boy. . . . 

— Hesperia 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I The World My Oyster ii 

II How I Opened the Shell ..... 19 

III Beyond the Blaauwberg 32 

IV Australia to the Klondyke .... 43 
V African Scenes 62 

VI The Plaza of Caracas 81 

VII Pacific Coast and Andean Plateau . . 95 

VIII Ecuador and Colombia ...... 113 

IX Central and Northern America . . , 131 

X The C/dR-iBBFAN Sea 152 

XI Up and Down Europe 169 

XII Archangel to Astrachan 193 

XIII Jerusalem and the Jews 211 

XIV The Mahomedan East 224 

XV India 241 

XVI China and Cochin China 259 

XVII The Archipelago 277 

XVIII The South Seas 292 



THIS WORLD OF OURS 



THIS WORLD OF OURS 



CHAPTER I 

THE WORLD MY OYSTER 

I HAVE only one life : then I am liable to be a long time 
dead. But before I die there is this beautiful World to 
see. 

If Francis Bacon could take all knowledge for his prov- 
ince, why mightn't I, a boy, try to take this Round World 
of Ours for mine? . . . And I did. I dedicated my- 
self to travel. I travelled so far, so wide, that perhaps no 
one has caught me up. But the quality of my wanderings 
— ^which only I can judge of — that is a different thing. It 
is so easy to travel to-day — mostwheres ; and I have trav- 
elled too easily. As I lay in bed once, computing my 
achievements, a voice cried in the dark — "You miserable 
Cook's tourist ! What do you imagine you've done? Re- 
member the French jeweller, Tavernier, setting out those 
centuries ago! And Marco Polo, reaching China in the 
Middle Ages! Think, too, with your wagons-Uts and 
your thermos flasks of Thomas Cory at, walking from 
Jerusalem to Ajmere at a cost of fifty shilHngsl Go to 
sleep." 

I did. Yet, however humbled my pride, I havf seen the 
Face of the Earth. I am getting far, far more than my 
share out of life; what can I give the World, for all the 
World is giving me? 

II 



12 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

Once in Australia, a bed-ridden man lay reading a 
book. It was my Shadow-Show; and he said to me, "I 
wish he would write another." 

That at least I can do; here it is. A small enough 
thing; yet if it give pleasure to some weary ones, let that 
be placed against my great debt. 

Travel was in my bones. I belonged, through my 
mother, to the Pinsons, English descendants, to all seem- 
ing, of the Pinzons of Spain. Living at the Port of 
Palos, beside Huelva, Alonzo, Vicente and Francisco, 
three brothers of this family, not only financed Columbus 
as to one-eighth but sailed with him to the discovery of 
America; and to Vicente Pinzon, some years later, fell 
the actual discovery of Brazil. Of the "Old Admiral" 
himself, who made so many things possible for me, I 
shall have enough to say. 

Conqiiistadores in the blood; an early instinct which 
told me I should sit at no desk — these counted for some- 
thing; yet my destiny was shaped for me otherwise. I 
was fourteen, with overstrung nerves and a weak diges- 
tion ; and after thoughts of a public school had been put 
aside — ^what was there for it ? Accompanied by a guard- 
ian, I set sail around the Cape for Australia. 

We saw no land. Our canvas was furled seventy-seven 
days later, off Wollongong, where a tug boat took us in 
tow, and that night we passed through Sydney Heads. 
Awaiting a berth in the dock, we dropped anchor in a 
cove on the north shore of the harbour. 

In these days, Sydney must needs find room for 
750,000 people, but in those days that cove lay utterly 
secluded, wooded to the water's edge. All was green and 
sparkling, lobelia and maidenhair fern grew in each crev- 
ice; landing on that first Sunday morning I roamed the 
woods enchanted. 



THE WORLD MY OYSTER 13 

In the evening I escorted three of our ladies over the 
water to church. In the gloaming we landed before a 
city where all the houses and superscriptions seemed Chi- 
nese, presently passing into crowded streets, and the Brit- 
ish town, where there was a cathedral, and splendid sing- 
ing; but my thoughts lay in those woods over on the 
"North Shore." 

Retracing our steps to the boat, we passed the stall of 
a huckstress, where I would have refreshed myself ; but it 
was conveyed to me that one of the ladies belonged to 
some stringent sect, and could not bear to see apples 
bought on the Sabbath. I had fingered the fruit, and al- 
ready held it in a bag; nevertheless, my first deliberately 
ethical act in Australia was to replace those apples on 
the stall and the sum of threepence in my trousers pocket. 

The following day we berthed ; upon which my guard- 
ian conducted me to an hostelry in the heart of Sydney, 
hastened to celebrate, and by evening lay speechless drunk 
upon his bed. He had been selected from eighty appli- 
cants. Waking next morning as fresh as ever, he sur- 
prised me by hurrying us aboard a small harbour steamer, 
crowded with merrymakers. Producing two tickets for 
the day's outing, he became the life and soul of the party, 
putting a furious zest into ''kiss-in-the-ring" with the 
more buxom among the women. That evening, in the 
hotel, he lay drunk again, and passed insensibly, wide 
eyed and stertorous, to a state bordering on delirium. A 
few days later this person was delivered to his relatives, 
and from then onward I travelled alone. 

Physically, as one may say, I was laimched, and in 
prudence, in certain Scottish traits of character, al- 
ready a grown man. But you are not to suppose that 
Australia, or any other land, is going to reveal the inner 
mysteries to a boy of fourteen. I was still stolid and un- 
imaginative; there must have been days, even in the 



14 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

"bush/' when a black coat and a desk hung over me as 
by a hair. But the sense of ''atmosphere/' which stands 
for the subtler side of things, was forming slowly, and a 
breath coming out of the East, nearly a year later, made 
my ultimate calling and election sure. 

On the homeward voyage from Australia, on a night, 
the steamer was to skirt the shores of Ceylon. There 
had been great heat, and I lay asleep that night on deck. 
And as I slept, I dreamed: dreamed of the happy Aus- 
tralian hunting-grounds, of kangaroos ridden down, of 
emus despatched, and of the white cockatoos which 
screech and circle in mid-air. And I dreamed we were 
already to the East. There were palm trees, and deserts ; 
and bagpipes were playing at the relief of Lucknow. Then 
I woke to strange cries, and in the silvery moonlight two 
fishermen were clinging to their catamaran, which the 
great steamer had brushed from her path. Ere the little 
tumult had died in our wake, my eyes were straining at 
a shadow I knew for the coast, and I gulped down the 
spice-laden air. 

There came a grey light after a while, and all along 
the coast a fringe of palms. Above the palm trees I saw 
the forests. As the daylight waxed, I saw these spread 
over upland and mountain. They rose up to Adam's 
Peak itself, where the rainclouds were already formed, 
and as I watched they became marvellously fresh and 
green. It was the dawn in Ceylon ; the East had become 
mine for evermore. 

Down that palm-fringed coast winds a railway. Pass- 
ing out of Colombo, trailing its smoke neath a green 
canopy, the train runs beside the shore, where the surf 
comes breaking, and cocoanuts fall thudding on the sands. 
There are cocoanut palms for eighty miles, and the train 
goes winding among them, between the hills and the sea. 

In these seashore woods, in their small houses, live 



THE WORLD MY OYSTER 15 

the Cingalese proprietors, with a beast or two, the nuts, 
and a covered bullock cart for their gathering — a happy 
people. And beside them, along these shores, live many, 
many fishermen from South India, who, pushing out 
their catamarans through the surf, spread the first net at 
sunrise, and are still dragging in the last when twilight 
falls. 

There is another road out of Colombo — the road to 
Kandy. The old capital of the Kings lies in the hills, 
at near 2000 feet, and after the heat of the day a divine 
freshness descends on her. The beauty of Kandy — the 
lake, the flowering trees of the valley, the primeval ver- 
dure of the forests all around — is hardly for pen to tell. 
When twilight falls, and the breeze comes blowing, a 
myriad crickets sing in the trees, many birds give out an 
evening note, and the fireflies in unison emit their mys- 
terious light. A solemn bell tolls at the dark. It sounds 
from the lakeside where rises the Buddhist shrine — ^the 
Temple of the Tooth — and presently the temple drums 
beat. The worshippers come stealing through the trees; 
it is a night of full moon, and they carry flower offerings 
to the gods. By the temple gate, where ancient tortoises 
raise their heads from out the moat, sit the blind, chanting 
for alms, and a leper or two, ghostly white in the moon- 
light. In the outer courtyard are flower sellers, and here, 
beside the drummers, a temple musician plays upon a 
pipe. A group of priests enter; yellow robed and shaven, 
they come from the monastery across the lake, and the 
boy novices walk with them. In the small inner temple 
there is barely moving room ; it is hot to suffocation. On 
a silver tray before the shrine are massed the flower offer- 
ings, blossoms of jasmine, of frangipani, of the temple 
flower, or panchseela — from the Tree of the Five Good 
Deeds — and the odour of them is strong to overpowering. 
The moments pass; the chief priest of Kandy drones the 



16 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

evening prayers; the Buddha gazes benignly upon those 
who worship, and the just and the unjust kneel for his 
benediction. 

After my return from Australia they sent me to South 
Africa. Here I wandered alone for many months, and 
formed affinities with that land which have never tar- 
nished. I went by ox-waggon to the new goldfields at 
Barberton, a six weeks' journey. I saw Kimberley, 
Rorke's Drift, and the grave of Carey the Informer at 
Port Elizabeth, I lived with the Colonists on their farms. 
Above all, I came to love the Zulus ; carrying away in my 
mind images of their kraals on the green uplands, and 
the haunting memory of their cries passing from hill to 
hill before the going down of the sun. 

I was home again at sixteen, and settled down more or 
less to study. But my longing for travel was strong as 
ever; in two summers, spent in South Germany, I tore 
the very hearts from Wiirttemberg and Bavaria. 

I went in due time to St. Andrews University, thence 
to Cambridge, taking a scratch course at each. My scho- 
lastic studies ended at twenty ; and when I think of what 
they amounted to, I emit a slight, sardonic laugh. Science 
is just exact knowledge, organised; yet in an age when 
science counts supremely, I went out into the world with 
none whatever. Unknowingly I was handicapped, as it 
were five hdindred yards in a mile, yet was expected to pit 
my wits against others and to rise to the top of the tree. 
The rubbish they taught me ! I knew no chemistry, but I 
was an authority on St. Paul's journeys. I knew no 
physics, but I had been posted on the gerund, the aorist, 
and the e-enclitic. I knew no geology, but had been 
taught on which side a house ought to fall in an earth- 
quake. My brain seemed full of mental junk; but it had 
been no one's business to show me the World as a Whole, 



THE WORLD MY OYSTER 17 

to explain the Reign of Law throughout the Universe, and 
the majestic sequence of Cause and Effect. I was not 
dense ; but I never came across a man who both knew the 
right things, and the right way to teach them. 

My father could not help me. He certainly taught me 
the greatest thing of all — to treat others as I would my- 
self — but his mind, like the minds of so many at that 
day, was theological. He had no use for science. Biology, 
Geology and such-like knowledge riddled the Bible, dissi- 
pated its miracles; so he brushed them on one side, and 
taught me to do the same. I took my religion, as every- 
one also seemed to do, without thought. My cast of 
mind remained theological until I was twenty-four. 

In the eyes of my own class, strangely enough, I was 
educated. The older folk asked of a youth that he should 
be ''good form," and defer to women, and be conven- 
tionally religious along Anglican or Church of Scotland 
lines ; and because I was these, what lay behind my fore- 
head didn't seem to matter. Science ! It wasn't quite the 
thing; it made people sceptics. In this world of well- 
to-do gentlefolk, Darwin meant less than dinner jackets ; 
I often heard them speak of the greatest man of the age 
with contempt. 

Do you know about unconscious cerebration? The 
Professor of Psychology at St. Andrews once sprung this 
on us, and proceeded to enlarge on it for the space of an 
hour. It is an inner, or second self, a person who thinks 
while you sleep, who turns over all sorts of problems you 
had given up, and suddenly at the end of weeks, or 
months, or it may be a year, places them in your brain, 
docketted and solved. 

Many hundred times, I suppose, from that landing in 
Sydney harbour, onwards, I had sworn myself to a life 
of travel. How I was to carry this out, when to begin, 
and where to get the money, were thought over, simmered 



18 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

in the mind for years, and remained unsolved, until — 
Lo and behold! — "unconscious cerebration" stepped in, 
and the way was clear. 

Gold Mining! I was to go to South Africa, my be- 
loved country, and start there. I had seen the new gold- 
fields there, and the Ballarat mines in Australia. Gold 
mining meant a return to Africa, adventure, an income, 
and afterwards the wide world. I had hit it! An 
oyster-opener lay ready to my hand; it remained but to 
prise apart the shell. 



CHAPTER II 

HOW I OPENED THE SHELL 

So gold mining it was : and I set out again for South 
Africa. Landing at Durban, I journeyed to the terminus 
of the Natal Railway, then at Newcastle. From New- 
castle, a coach to the Transvaal left daily, drawn by eight 
mules ; travelling across the lower slopes of 'Majuba, and 
over Laing^s Nek, a few hours' run brought us to the 
frontier, at Volksrust. 

So far as this, I knew the road. It was the old De 
Kaap road I had travelled in the waggon five years be- 
fore ; but now, beyond Volksrust, we turned off due west, 
for Barberton was dead, or dying, and Johannesburg was 
king. On the second afternoon, as we bowled along, the 
endless rolling plains rose up to the Witwatersrand — the 
White Waters Ridge — and there, spread out mile upon 
mile, were the smoke stacks and galvanised roofs of the 
Main Reef. Arrived in the town at dusk, I alighted at 
the coach office, shook off a layer of dust, stretched my 
stiffened limbs, and merged myself in the greatest gold- 
field of the world. 

I was soon located on a mine, and at work on the regu- 
lation eight-hour shift. If I shaped well, there was the 
promise of pay after several months. This mine, lying 
thirty miles from Johannesburg, was not on the Main 
Reef. It had been discovered by a working prospector, 
who had sold it, as such men sell their finds, for a mess of 
pottage. Penniless once more, he hung about the scene 
of his triumph, and ever and anon would be found lying 
besotted on the veld, 

19 



20 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

The ore here averaged no more than nine inches wide ; 
but richer by far than the Main Reef, and mined very 
clean, gave the biggest yield per ton in the whole Trans- 
vaal. This attracted notice in financial quarters, and 
presently the consulting engineer of the most powerful 
Rand group paid us a visit. I was now employed in the 
stamp mill, and earned £io a month. For eight hours 
each day, or, every third week, each night, I had the 
amalgam plates in trust; during the morning we scraped 
these, and the mill manager carried a bucket of amalgam, 
which was one-third gold, two-thirds mercury, to the 
safe. Seeing this white paste gather there, day by day, 
night by night, I too began, as it were, to sit up and take 
notice. Of the money I had brought from home, £200 
remained; one day I took a holiday, interviewed a stock- 
broker, and placed this sum in the shares, then standing 
at thirty shillings. Whether it was my purchase, or the 
buying of the great Johannesburg house, is neither here 
nor there ; but the shares rose steadily to four pounds ten, 
and I took my first mining profit. 

When I had been at this mine a year, it became time to 
take stock of things. My pay was now £15 a month, and 
£20 was in sight; but I now realised that neither mill 
work, assaying, nor the newly introduced cyaniding of 
tailings led anywhere, and that work in the mine was the 
only road to knowledge and preferment. This mine, 
underground, was worked by Cornishmen, and I con- 
cluded that they, too, were not what I sought. The Corn- 
ish have been the Bourbons of gold mining. With con- 
siderable aptitude, they also were the inheritors of tra- 
dition, and tradition, after the discovery of the Rand, 
proved a curse. Even in those days their prestige had 
begun to suffer. 

As I have said, I took stock. A change was indicated, 
and I returned to Johannesburg. I had finished with sur- 



HOW I OPENED THE SHELL 21 

face work. I was now given the underground run of 
several mines, and although drawing no wage, put in 
my time in the study of breaking ground, sampling and 
measurement of ore, and surveying. 

Another year went by. I had acquired a certain judg- 
ment of mining conditions. I now had access to the use 
of some capital, and the ear of several influential men. I 
determined to be done with the Rand for a time, and 
strike further afield. 

I was offered a share in a newly found mine on the 
Zululand border. Duly reaching the spot, I stayed for 
a time on the Dutchman's farm, panned the ore, took my 
samples, summed up the conditions, decided that the ven- 
ture would not do, and started on the four days' return 
ride, through Zululand, to the railway. On the second 
day, my horse failed me, and seeing a large kraal not far 
from the track, I rode the jaded beast there and dis- 
mounted. 

The natives of the huts, a dozen men or so, were seated 
on an adjacent green knoll. They sat about a fire, grill- 
ing meat on the embers, while their women, preparing 
the native beer, carried it to them in calabashes. The 
headman of the kraal, whose belly was much distended 
by the beer, was nevertheless provided of a sound head. 
The sum we eventually closed on was eighteen shillings, 
for which a sturdy Basuto pony was placed at my dis- 
posal, and a boy instructed to lead back my worn horse. 

The new beast started finely; but the next evening, as 
I rode, a thunderstorm came on, and galloping in the 
darkness, between the lightning flashes, he fell, and went 
to pieces. A night's rest failed to set him up, and the 
following day, while yet ten miles from the railway, he 
was utterly spent. 

I had sworn to catch that train. It meant spending 



22 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

Christmas Eve down country with my friends, and I 
could do it by abandoning my beast and walking quickly 
to the railway. My eyes ranged the land for miles, but 
there was no kraal, no native in sight, no possible mes- 
senger. Scruple bade me stay where I was, bade me lead 
the pony to the agreed destination; but my will that 
morning would have crushed ten thousand scruples. I 
left the panting beast by the roadside and strode away. I 
caught the train. I spent Christmas at the old farm. 
But I learned later that a saddled pony, with a festering 
back, had wandered for many days, and had had to be 
killed; and I knew a kraal where the white-man's good 
faith had become tarnished. 

Then I scoured the Eastern Transvaal. Fifteen years 
before ever the Rand was known. Pilgrims' Rest was the 
scene of a great alluvial gold rush, and it was to famous 
Barberton I had travelled when a boy. There were now 
goldfields at De Kaap, at Lydenburg, and throughout the 
Low Country, lying among mountains, thick bush, and 
fever-stricken valleys, covering a great belt of country. 
All of these I wandered over. 

In a Cape cart, with four horses, I was driving down 
to the Klein Letaba. Johann Rissik held the reins — ■ 
acting surveyor-general of the Transvaal the day they 
had laid out ''Johannes" -burg * — and H. B. Marshall, 
ground landlord of half that great town, sat with me on 
the back seat. Driving out of Pietersburg, we slept at 
Solomon Marais' farm house, built where the veld takes 
its last dip into the low country. Rising at daylight, we 
found the old Boer on his stoep. He had risen, as was 
his wont, at three o'clock, had drunk his coffee these two 

* Johannesburg, on the suggestion of Com Paul himself, was 
named after Stephanus Johannes Paulus Kruger, President of the 
Transvaal ; Christian Johannes Joubert, Minister of Mines ; and 
Johann Rissik, acting Surveyor-General. 



HOW I OPENED THE SHELL 23 

hours, and we found him in his arm-chair placidly await- 
ing the sunrise. 

It was a sweltering day as we drove down the Letaba 
valley and the fever season was coming on. White men 
died like flies in the Low Country, and I was minded to 
tell them the story of a funeral at Pilgrims' Rest. At 
the Theta mine, a man had been mangled by the ma- 
chinery; so mangled and bloody was he, that they sent 
for the mine carpenter, who was careless in these matters, 
enjoining that his coffin boards should accurately fit. 

The funeral cortege passed out, and the old Dane gazed 
professionally on his handiwork. *'No yuce'll come out 
of that one," they heard him say. And to do him justice, 
no juice did. 

We drove along ; and suddenly, striking a rock, we went 
over. The Cape cart lay athwart the road, the hood 
staved in, the horses kicking furiously at their traces ; for 
all we knew we had broken our necks. 

"Save the limejuice!" 

From out the debris z. clear voice had called, a voice, 
they told me afterwards, which was mine. The precious 
fluid was safe. So, wonderful to relate, were we. But 
in a dire strait, my presence of mind was made known to 
the great ones of the land. 

I had been inspecting the Sheba on behalf of some 
London shareholders, and rode down the mountains into 
Barberton. The little town, already moribund these five 
years, was beflagged and excited. In terms of an old 
contract, a branch line of the Lourengo Marques-Pretoria 
railway had now been built into Barberton, and the first 
train was due in that very day. I accompanied the pop- 
ulace to the outskirts of the town. 

The train drew in amid cheering. Among the first to 
alight, to my surprise, was a certain elderly man from 
Johannesburg, a casual worker about the mines, neither 



S4 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

physically nor mentally strong, a person of no standing 
whatever. He was stooping, and his face was grey. 

"What are you doing here?" I said. 

"Oh! . . . I've left Johannesburg. I ought never to 
have gone there ... it was too hard a life. . . . If only 
I can get back to Cairo! ... I had good employment 
there once, and people knew me." 

I said, "How are you going to get to Cairo? It will 
cost money from here." 

"I have only two pounds ... I hoped to be able to 
work my way there. I have prayed the dear Lord that 
He will not desert me." 

I had known this man for some years. He was elderly, 
and feeble, and I had seen him sinking. His tragedy was 
now upon him, and his appearance there, strange though 
it seemed, was inevitable. I told him to figure out a sum 
which would take him to Cairo, and meet me the next 
day. 

We met. The Kaap Valley was bathed in morning 
light. In a broken voice he mentioned a sum; and be- 
cause of the sunshine, because I was young and strong, 
or, perhaps, because of the matter of a Basuto pony, and 
of other things lying in my memory, I gave it to him, and 
stood by while he sobbed, and bought him his ticket to 
Delagoa Bay, placing him aboard the second train which 
ever ran out of Barberton. 

The old man went off with my address, and he was to 
write. But from Cairo came no letter, nor from the long 
African coast. I think his God had shown mercy, and 
had rung down the curtain quickly. 

My Transvaal mining education was rounded off as a 
managing director, a coal mine on the East Rand claim- 
ing my services. Three boreholes, put down haphazard 
on the level veld, had located a seam of coal forty-two 



HOW I OPENED THE SHELL 25 

feet thick, with twelve feet of good commercial value. 
The colliery had been well laid out by the manager, an 
able Scotch miner, and with so wide a seam we were pre- 
pared to do great things. But it was our trouble to be 
late in the field. A market for our coal had still to be 
secured, and an economic struggle with the other col- 
lieries round about loomed ahead. 

We worked the output up to 12,000 tons a month, less 
than half the mine's capacity, with no great trouble. A 
big contract, with that powerful financial group afore- 
said, was now in the market, and this we determined to 
secure. It meant a cut — something like ninepence a ton 
— and when we had made this, and secured the greater 
part of the contract, my efforts to lessen the cost of pro- 
duction became frantic. An itemised cost sheet became 
my bible, and my eye was upon every outgoing. Our 
colliery, in those days of extravagance, was a model, yet 
even here were abuses, wheels within wheels, which I 
could not reach. Some items too were highly vexatious. 
The Netherlands Railway, a great stickler for demurrage 
on empty trucks, became a nightmare to us; upon occa- 
sions, I stayed with the Kaffirs on our loading platform 
as late as two in the morning. 

It was a great day when I tackled the item of Kaffir 
medicine. A Boksburg druggist had contracted with the 
colliery on a quantity basis, and kept sending forward 
immense jars of highly-flavoured liquids — opening, as- 
tringent, or antifebrile as the case might be — which at 
once disappeared into the stomachs of our eight hundred 
natives. A visit to the compound, and a dissertation on 
therapeutics from its superintendent, convinced me that 
for one kaffir who took medicine as medicine, a dozen 
were drinking it for the relish of its flavouring. A modi- 
fied contract was at once enforced with Boksburg, and 



26 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

the cost of mining our coal decreased by precisely one 
farthing per ton. 

Then there were candles. It seemed to me our con- 
sumption was excessive, that the allowance of, I think it 
was two candles per shift to each native, might be re- 
duced. The manager could not see it, and for a time the 
point remained unsettled. One evening, as the natives 
were being hauled up, I stationed myself at the top of 
the shaft, searching each one as he stepped from the 
cage. They were taking, as was their wont, all unbumt 
candle for use in the compound; and, rejecting stumps, 
I collected off them three bucket loads of quarters, halves, 
and a goodly proportion of whole candles. Calling for 
assistance, I conveyed my trophies to the office, where I 
set them down without a word. The manager looked 
grim at first, but as he inspected the buckets a something 
mellower came into his face. We were fellow Scots, and, 
as I have said, there was a goodly proportion of whole 
candles. A cash saving might clearly be effected, and 
his features relaxed to its aesthetic significance. Art is 
Art, the world over. 

Let me say this : our mine, before I left, was producing 
coal a shilling a ton below our neighbours. We had added 
a Scotch sales manager to our team — a football inter- 
national; the scrimmage was now in the enemy's ^'25." 
y I made expeditions to the Free State, to inspect dia- 

mond mines there, and visited Kimberley again. The 
vast Premier mine, near Pretoria, was not then known, 
but one could realise that the five mines of De Beers', 
yy together with Jagersfontein, were able to flood the 

markets. 

The diamond a precious stone ! I saw them poured by 

^ the bushel at De Beers, handled as a grocer would handle 

currants. There is a practical monopoly, it is true, and 

great financial interests which regulate prices; but the 



HOW I OPENED THE SHELL 2T 

foundations of the diamond industry do not really rest 
on these. They rest on the vanity of woman, on the de- 
sire of man. They rest on the sexual instinct itself, a 
security which I conceive to be gilt-edged. 

I did not see Rhodesia in its earliest days. On the 
Rand we had a horror of quartz mines, of their tendency 
to lose value at a shallow depth; and we noted that all 
mines in the Northern Transvaal, that is to say nearest 
the Rhodesian frontier, while often rich at surface, in- 
variably went wrong in this way. To a seeker of mines 
the Transvaal had offered more scope; and the Matabele 
rebellion was some time past, the country settled down, 
before ever I went North. 

Rhodesia was an immense goldfield — that was certain. 
It might, or might not, prove economically rich; but a 
gold belt spread for hundreds of miles, and ore deposits 
lay scattered throughout it from end to end. 

When Cecil Rhodes annexed this country, for political 
reasons, he nevertheless figured on finding it a goldfield. 
What had he gone on ? There was the geological evidence 
of Mauch; the crude assumptions of the few traders to 
Lobengula's Kraal ; but I never heard that any first-hand 
evidence came his way. Now that the country was 
thrown open, and prospectors had worked for years, it 
was child's play to diagnose a great goldfield ; but I did 
not cease to ponder the problem of Rhodes's earlier 
knowledge. 

I was impressed with some of the mines, and with the 
statements of leading authorities in Buluwayo. I learned 
later that the figures which had impressed me were mostly 
lies; these ''leading authorities" were no more entitled 
to pronounce on gold mines than a London haberdasher. 

A curious thing had happened. The English aristoc- 
racy, following Rhodes blindly, had next allied itself with 



«8 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

London company promoters. It now directed the Rho- 
desian Companies, helped to finance them, on terms, and 
had shipped its scions and younger sons wholesale to the 
land of promise. 

When I first went to Rhodesia, the younger sons were 
in the ascendant, running things. Grouped physically, 
they were a fine body of men; but as scientific miners 
worse than futile, and in company mongering not too 
scrupulous. The point, however, is this : because Rho- 
desian mining lacked professional treatment, it lan- 
guished fifteen years. There were payable deposits in the 
country, but, with rare exceptions, it was the unpayable 
which were developed and worked. Men rushed for the 
white quartz reefs. They were easily found. They dis- 
closed ancient workings too, which sometimes went a 
hundred feet deep. "If the ancients" — argued the 
younger sons and the pseudo-experts — *'if the ancients, 
with their lack of machinery, could work these mines at 
a profit, how much greater to-day shall our profit be?" 

The ''ancients" theory was the mainstay of Rhodesia 
for years ; but of course its value, as evidence, was pre- 
cisely nil. The ancients, whom I conceive to have been 
Arabs, worked their mines with slaves. The very food 
supply of the workers would be grown by other slaves, 
and, excepting the slight item of supervision, the winning 
of the gold cost the mine owners nothing at all. A mine 
yielding 20/- a ton, let us say in the year 1697, gave the 
Arabs a profit of 20/- a ton ; the same mine, in the year 
1897, equipped with f 100,000 worth of modern ma- 
chinery, was being worked for 10/- a ton loss. 

Most of these white quartz mines of Rhodesia went 
wrong shallow. Others held down better, let us say to 
500 or to 800 feet ; but with a narrow reef, and no great 
length, seldom yielded enough ore to repay cost of equip- 
ment. These were not mines for companies to handle; 



HOW I OPENED THE SHELL 29 

but they were priceless object lessons to me in mine valu- 
ation. Working the schistose, and the "banded" de- 
posits — lower grade, but less ephemeral than the quartz 
reefs — Rhodesia should yet justify herself as a goldfield. 
And the era of the younger sons has passed. 

Time slipped away. I had been six and a half years 
in the Transvaal, or roving over South Africa. I was 
twenty-seven years old, and a reconsidering of the posi- 
tion, a stock-taking of maturity, presented itself insist- 
ently to my mind. 

It was the old story — travel hunger ! While there had 
been new fields to study, new mines to see, I was content ; 
judgment was maturing, experience becoming valuable. 
Now there were no new fields in South Africa, and it 
gave me joy to think, what was indeed the truth, that 
knowledge of other mines and methods was needful to 
my career. 

I decided to leave the Rand. Yet I knew that among 
the goldfields of the world I should find no other like it. 
But twelve years ago, Witwatersrand had been bare veld; 
here the korhaans called in the waste, and I suppose that 
between Jan Meyer's house and the farm of Piet Bezuid- 
enhout lay no single habitation. Now there was a large 
town, three converging railways, forty miles of mines, 
immense exploitation in progress, and a growing output. 
I saw that the Rand would yield not less than a thousand 
millions sterling. 

I saw other things. The great "boom" was over, set- 
ting up a backs wing of the pendulum, and money was 
getting tight. The Jameson Raid was now history, but 
the capitalists had not yet learned to leave politics alone. 
In the mines, from top to bottom, there was extravagance. 
The vital fact of all was the altitude. The rolling high- 
veld, where Johannesburg stood, was 6000 feet above sea 



so THIS WORLD OF OURS 

level, and men's hearts worked at abnormal pressure. 
Buoyancy, optimism, was in the air. It put more gold in 
the ore. It cut down costs. It refused to see the weak 
points, the poorer patches in the deeper mines, the gigan- 
tic capital expenditure that loomed ahead. The big men, 
fortified by their engineers, sent home glowing reports, 
and in private their talk was yet more glowing. Assum- 
ing every ton of ore to be payable, actuarial tables were 
drawn on, and the 'lives'' of the mines, with a dividend 
of seven per cent, and redemption of capital, were figured 
to the third place of decimals. They believed it too, these 
capitalists. At one time we all believed it. The altitude 
of the Rand had much to answer for. 

The time of my departure was come, and I summoned 
some twenty-five of my friends to a farewell. We dined 
at the Rand Club — the old building, and the scene of 
many famous exploits. It was here that Edouard Lip- 
pert, the ablest German who ever lived in the Transvaal, 
speaking in English, and defending the catering commit- 
tee from a combined onslaught, put our chosen orators 
to rout. It was from the balcony, dangerously crowded, 
that Sir Sidney Shippard addressed the mob during the 
Jameson Raid, and I, standing next him, marvelled we 
did not go crashing into the street. It was here we re- 
ceived the Reform prisoners, fresh from Pretoria Gaol — 
a lurid night, when I broke the stout marble table in two 
pieces. It was in the Club dining room, in the "boom" 
time, that the lunchers at one table were valued at twenty 
millions, on paper; and here the caterer of those days, M. 
Heritier, was wont to preside, carver in hand, before a 
whole roasted lamb. 

And the game of poker! How often had I risen from 
dinner, entered the card room, played through the night, 
and emerged for the wash-and-brush-up which preceded 
breakfast? Our set played the legitimate game of those 



HOW I OPENED THE SHELL 31 

days — two pounds ante, straddle, and eight to play — and 
one could win or lose his two hundred. We were the 
moderates; of that other famous sitting, when £84,000 
changed hands, we spoke with bated breath. 

Into this famous building I led my guests. An orches- 
tra welcomed us with sweet music, the wine-butler im- 
corked an exquisite Lafitte, and we sat merrily to dine. 

Five of that little party have gone down to the shades. 
With others fate has most cruelly dealt ; but that night, at 
least, no cloud rested on our brows. There were speeches. 
These over, I sang them ^'Milord Sir Smith" and "Brown 
of Colorado" to the full orchestra; I was the host, and 
they clapped me a double encore. 

On my right, there sat one who has since come to high 
estate. Holding his glass to the light, he muttered, as if 
in reflection, "This is a fine claret." 

"It ought to be," I whispered like a damned fool in his 
ear; "it costs thirty shiUings a bottle." 

I had but uttered the words, when he hailed a waiter, 
calling for a fresh bottle. Having drunk copiously, he 
anointed his head, crying loudly, "It costs thirty shil- 
lings ! Thirty shillings a bottle !" and the ruby liquid ran 
down his beard, as it had been Aaron's beard, the Lord's 
Anointed. "Thirty shillings a bottle !" the cry was taken 
up. Corks popped furiously, and my friends laved them- 
selves, wallowed in the exquisite wine, till they could wal- 
low no longer. The bill that I paid next day was for £120. 

And now I was off! Off to break new ground, with 
retaining fees in my pocket. The useless being turned 
out by Cambridge was no longer useless. I had come up 
against realities. I had a profession. I was able to earn 
money. Moreover, I was as free as air, and the wide 
world beckoned me. I had opened my oyster shell. It 
remained but to swallow what the Mayors of Colchester 
call "the succulent bivalve." 



CHAPTER III 

BEYOND THE BLAAUWBERG 

The day before I sailed from Africa, the last after- 
noon, I walked down to the old fish-market of Cape 
Town, by the shores of Table Bay. Under a cloudless 
African sky the Malay fishwives, purveyors of snoek, 
bartered remnants with the "Cape" people, their voices 
rising high in guttural Dutch. Their men, the fishers, 
were given over to smoking and relaxation; in the mel- 
lowness of the afternoon they lay stretched about asleep. 
Malay children, amphibious, splashed joyously among 
the boats. These folk were the descendants of Javanese 
slaves, sent here to the order of a Dutch Governor-Gen- 
eral. Acclimatised now, and prospering — fishsellers, 
laundrymen, cab-owners, great workers among horses — 
Cape Town had long ago become their all in all. 

I was waiting for the dusk, for that view, before sun- 
set, of the Blaauwberg. On such evenings, in this rare 
Southern atmosphere, those distant mountains suffered a 
change, became utterly impalpable; on this very evening, 
as dusk stole across the Cape Flats, they faded out of all 
existence. 

Yef this range, a mere illusion in the twilight of the 
peninsula, was the Southern portal. Beyond it lay the 
whole of Africa. Paarl rested this side, under the foot- 
hills, Worcester beneath the higher peaks, and so one 
came to Hex River Pass; the train which drew out of 
Cape Town to-night would be passing over the Karroo 
in the morning, rushing towards Bloemfontein. . . . 

A coastal boat had gone out too. It was passing Hout's 

32 



BEYOND THE BLAAUWBERG 33 

Bay now, and the "Twelve Apostles"; some time in the 
night it would round Agulhas, heading up into the Indian 
Ocean. If it was rough off Port Elizabeth, they lowered 
you overboard in a basket. When you had passed St. 
John's River you were off Kaffraria. This was a green 
land, clumped with bush, and smoke would be rising 
from the kraals of the Pondos. Durban lay ahead, the 
road to Maritzburg and Greytown, to the Zulu country, 
to Swazieland and Lydenburg. Everywhere the sun 
would be shining, coaches and postcarts starting on long 
journeys, native runners singing as they carried the mails ; 
the sleek Boer cattle, envy of the hijwoners, would be 
still grazing in the high-veld; on the Natal farms they 
would be getting in the mealies, the peaches would be 
picked, the pumpkins for next year's use set out on the 
roofs; in many a kraal up and down the land, where a 
young beast had been killed, there would be beer drinking 
and carousal far into the night. 

And I was leaving it all ! At dawn there would come 
reincarnation of the Blaauwberg, the sun would rise over 
the Karroo, and the bounteous life of this land renew 
itself while I sailed far away. Innumerable memories, 
subtle aspects of South Africa crowded upon my mind. 
It was a thousand miles long, a world in itself, profoundly 
various. There were vast plains where the antelope still 
roamed, dark kloofs where baboons barked harshly at 
the dawn, desert places where life did not exist ; yet within 
these same borders Chaka had ruled, the Bantu race had 
reached a negroid apotheosis, and thirty or forty populous 
tribes of black men now moved and had their being. The 
whites held this land now — British and Dutch, a mere 
handful, and they at each other's throats; among the 
farmers on their farms, amid the flabby environment of 
the small towns, rancour was spreading broadcast, sim- 
mering slowly into hate. 



S4 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

At this dark and witching hour, standing by the old 
fish-market, I too seemed presently gathered with the 
impalpable. The Malays had wended to their own quar- 
ters, the Cape people were gone to their homes, and I was 
alone. The wavelets lapped, and there came the distant 
sounds of a shunting train, but these never yet put an 
end to reverie. Impalpable! Yes. In the darkness I 
seemed verily disembodied — a spirit, gazing northward. 
My soul had gone into South Africa. At that moment I 
was of her, all-knowing and all-pervading. 

I saw where hleshoks, and all the antelope tribe lay 
couched for the night, from across the bay there, even 
up to Lake N'gami ; I saw into each lair, knowing those 
which lay for dawn, and those which would rise to feed by 
light of the yet unrisen moon. I sensed a tramp of heavy 
feet, and the cracking of twigs; in the precincts of 
Addo bush the elephants were still feeding. The pro- 
tected Eland of Natal lay resting, hard beneath the Berg, 
but a small herd of wild Eland, the last in the Transvaal, 
grazed beside Olifants River; Impala darted past them, 
fleeing from a distant roar, and a herd of Koodoo, soon 
to be dead of the rinderpest. I saw hippos laving them- 
selves in the deep pools behind Komati Poort. Others 
swam in those calm reaches above Victoria Falls, where 
the double rainbow hung all day long, the cataract crashed 
thundering, and trees in the *'Rain Forest" dripped the 
spray. Over a hundred rocky places baboons were now 
scampering, playing together in brutish frolic; especially 
could I hear those in the kloof at Heidelberg, and a hoarse, 
continuous barking from Devils' Kantoor, above the val- 
ley of De Kaap. On the placid high-veld, fearing no 
beast of prey these many years, recumbent cattle rest- 
fully chewed the cud. Immensely lank secretary birds, 
inveterate killers of snakes, stood here and there adja- 
cent; standing upon one leg, sentinels in demeanour, they 



BEYOND THE BLAAUWBERG 35 

were nevertheless fast asleep. The paauw, or greater 
bustard, whose head peered at you above long grass ; the 
korhaan, the lesser, screeching and circling in the hot 
afternoon sun; the uncouth oddodors that had flown 
"honking" over the Noodsberg — ^all of these had passed 
into the darkness. The partridges lay nested, the grey- 
w^ings and the red ; and the smaller birds — down in Natal 
the m'swempis, the ducks on Lake Chrissie, the snipe in 
the saltpans along the Barberton road, the red-breasted 
sakabulas, snared for the velvety-black tail feathers, and 
innumerable doves roosting high up in the trees. The 
bird kingdom was settled to its sleep ; but the porcupines 
were abroad, the antbears, the hyaenas, the egg-sucking 
iguanas, and all the predatory tribes of the night. 

My omniscience, benign and pervading, rested in these 
moments upon all the natives. Out in the Western desert, 
Bushmen and Korannas lay in the open, under the stars ; 
hunters these, small men, thickset and gnarled, they would 
steal to their traps long before the dawn. In the rude 
huts and caves, cushioned upon their immense buttocks, 
lay their women, lying beneath skins, a child under each 
arm. To the North, beyond Kuruman, beyond Gabar- 
ones, the gemsbok hunters and the kaross makers ad- 
vanced far into the Kalahari — the warriors, as it were, 
of the pusillanimous Bechuana tribes. The rank and 
file, after a day's tillage of the dry, unfruitful soil, were 
laid down to rest; while Khama, their paramount chief, 
thin, mild and elderly, sat alone in his stad by Palapchwe, 
reading the scriptures. 

Over all the high lands of the central plateau — the 
Karroo, the Orange Free State, the Transvaal, heading 
for the distant mining fields, bearing wool and hides to 
the railways or the coastal ports, carrying liquors and 
provisions to the interior — trains of waggons had passed 
during the day, and now, in a thousand outspans, were 



36 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

drawn up for the night. The white men — the transport 
riders — having supped, sit apart and smoke; their mat- 
tresses are laid on the ground, beneath the waggons. With 
each train, it is true, there goes a tented waggon ; but these 
are for their women, when they travel, or for use in the 
rains. The native drivers sit about a fire. It is fed with 
dried cowdung, and the acrid smoke that rises causes their 
eyes to water. In a paraffin tin coffee is being boiled. 
Some draw at their water pipes, others whittle down 
leather thongs for whips, and when one raises a mouth 
organ to his lips their eyes turn eagerly to him. Music 
steals on the night — a minor repetitive, formless, without 
beginning or end. It is a mournful drawing in of 
breath, a mumbled talking, as it were, to the little in- 
strument, then quick expulsion and a drawing in once 
more. It is strangely minor, and so rhythmic that feet 
shuffle and bodies sway; it causes in these savages a low 
murmuring of song, and in me, who have heard it a 
thousand times in the African nights, an ecstasy of sad- 
ness. 

Beside each waggon its oxen lie, sixteen beasts, large 
boned, long homed, tethered by their reims, and but a 
moment ago driven in from the grass. At sunrise, hav- 
ing been driven to water, they will be rounded up by the 
voorlooper — a Kaffir boy, naked but for the discarded 
tunic of a British redcoat — and the driver, calling each 
beast by its name, calling to ''Postman! Engelsmant 
Blacksmit! Estcourt!" in a high-pitched invective of 
Dutch and English, will begin to inspan. 

In the fertile Eastern belt, in the great territory of the 
Pondos, the Griquas, the Galekas, the Basutos, reaching 
North even to the borders of Natal, the tribes were now 
sunk in sleep. Over the embers of fires old men might 
linger — the heads of families, telling of their youth, and 
their prowess, bubbling water in their ox-horn pipes, 



BEYOND THE BLAAUWBERG 37 

coughing as they draw in the smoke. In the silence a dog 
might bark at cattle nosing too freely around the kraal, 
there might come a ruffling of feathers from the fowl 
roost, the startled call of a dove, the rush of some small 
animal, the cry of a distant hyaena — yet Kaffraria was 
asleep after its labours, and slept deeply. 

But in distant Swazieland, at the King's Kraal, there 
is no sleep. There had been a great hunt, lasting three 
days, and the carcasses of many bucks had been brought 
in — meaty and luscious riethoks, gamey 'nkonkas, and 
the tender little duikers; the fires to cook them were 
stoked up, the preparations for grilling well in hand. 
Umbandine himself, his hunting days over, had not been 
of the party ; but it had pleased him to extol the hunters, 
and to give orders for a great dance. 

On the very instant, runners had set out — summoners 
of the induiiaSy and of the King's witch doctors — and 
others, ascending the neighbouring hills, had cried in the 
Zulu tongue far down the valleys. By noon the news was 
over half Swazieland, and the young men, from as far 
distant as thirty miles, making for the King's Kraal. 
They carried the ox-hide shield, the throwing and the 
stabbing assegai, the kerrie fashioned of the black and 
white unsumhet, and ran with a long, swinging stride. 
They were smeared over with fat, their teeth were white 
and faultless, their bodies the bodies of Greek Gods ; and 
when they thought of the dance, of the grilled meats, and 
the foaming tshwala, they sang for very joy. 

In the nearer country, when they cried the news, com- 
motion had fallen on the women. The mealie gatherers 
heard it, the bird scarers who sat on raised platforms by 
the patches of millet, the maidens who were washing 
themselves in the cold pools. They would be there ! It 
was an easy walk to the King's Kraal, and there had not 
been a big dance these many moons. Plump married 



38 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

women, busy around the huts, heard the cry, and hung 
themselves with beads. With matrimony, their hair had 
been plastered brown, standing out clumped and stiff 
from their heads. It needed no touch now, and the cos- 
tume itself, the beaded lappet, hung discreetly from the 
thighs. Slinging a suckling babe to their breasts, they 
too had presently set out. 

It is verging on midnight now at the King's Kraal, and 
the full moon has at last risen. It shines upon a great 
assemblage. A dozen fat young oxen have been killed, 
supplementing the meat of the bucks, and many cala- 
bashes of native beer stand about — pinkish and frothing, 
fermented from the millet. The warriors, primed with 
beer, gorged with meat, though not yet to repletion, await 
the signal. 

Umbandine, the king, stands up. Grossly fat, he is 
raised into his place. Moreover, he is drunk. A trader 
that day — a would-be concessionaire — had sent a case 
of champagne into the Kraal, and Umbandine loves cham- 
pagne more than he loves all his women. 

He is of the Swazies, who are of the Zulus, who are 
the physical aristocrats of all the Bantu race. In his 
day he has been glorious too, and a warrior. Now he is 
unwieldy, and played out, and drunk; but he is the king, 
and the indunas, and the witch doctors, and all the people 
prostrate themselves. ''Bay etc! Inkosi ami!'' they shout, 
and as he sinks to the ground all the dancers spring up, 
running quickly forward. 

Among the older men, sitting so observant there on 
their haunches, many have danced the real dance on this 
spot, sung the war song of the Swazie race, seen the 
smellers-out point to the sacrifices of propitiation. Alas 
for the coming of white men, and the vanished power! 
for the good old days that are gone ! This thing is well 
enough in its way, and there has been no such a layout 



BEYOND THE BLAAUWBERG 39 

of meat these ten years; yet it is but a masque, a fete 
champ etre, a summoning of decadent revellers to Ver- 
sailles ! 

But it was a fine revel, I warrant you. Four hundred 
men danced at the King's Kraal, and as they danced the 
ground trembled. Four hundred sakabula plumes were 
dipped, and rose again, the shields whirled and whirled 
in unison, the broad stabbing assegais glinted together in 
the moonlight, the chant of the king's divine majesty was 
heard, and all the people rocked with emotion. When 
at last the victorious song of the Swazies arose, the very 
hills echoed it into the night. 

Whether or not I still stood by the fish-market, God 
knows. But this / know : that my spirit roamed the land, 
which now lay as in the white light of day. Here was 
the high- veld again, and a Dutch village I had never seen ; 
but I knew it for Amersfoort, on the Transvaal's Eastern 
border. The time is before my day, too. It is Nachtmaal 
— the Holy Communion — and the Boers in their waggons 
are coming in from many miles around. The tents, made 
of the waggon sails, are already pitched in the market 
square, there is a great drinking of coffee, and the predi- 
kants are going around visiting. 

What's that they are saying? A defeat of the rooineksf 
Round old Du To its' waggon there is an excited group, 
and other Boers come running across. Yes ! The natives 
had the news an hour ago. It came to Du Toits' waggon- 
driver from a Swazie runner. Cetewayo's own impi came 
upon them near the Buffalo River. They were cut to 
pieces, and the survivors are fleeing into Natal. 

And I knew they were right. The day before, while 
Amersfoort prepared its Nachtmaal, the impi, throwing 
out its crescents, had closed on Lord Chelmsford's army. 
Rushing in, raising a great cry of victory, they had 



40 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

stabbed again and again, and I saw the redcoats go down 
in the sunshine. That was at Isandhlwana — the field of 
the "little hand" ; yet these natives knew it at Amersfoort, 
140 miles as the crow flies, within the 24 hours, and I 
thought again of the hill-tops of Zululand, and of those 
cries that had passed from man to man before the going 
down of the sun. 

My enchantment still rested on me. A moment more, 
and I had passed to the "Shoot." Here the Barberton 
road steeply dips — more steeply than you have ever 
thought of — into the valley of De Kaap, and I saw them 
again chaining the wheels of the waggons. 

At Coetzeestroom, below the Kantoor, in this same 
region, six men shovelled into a sluice. Weather-beaten 
and old, they were the last alluvial miners in South Afri- 
ca, and I saw that their time was nearly come. 

A blood-red sun rose over the Low Country, setting 
Mozambique on fire. In this phantasmagoria of dawn, 
I saw myself again swimming Oh f ant's River, toiling 
many hours through a waterless country, parched and 
weary, coming at length into Leydsdorp; and I saw a 
funeral set out from the Sutherland Reef, where the man- 
ager had broken his neck. 

Now I am riding into Middelburg, in the days before 
the railway. I come from the German Mission at Botsa- 
belo, a dozen miles away. It is the Transvaal spring, 
and the blending out there of the young willows with the 
peach blossoms had filled my soul with peace. There is a 
little procession coming down the opposite slope into 
Middelburg, and I remember that one was expected. They 
left Pretoria yesterday morning, and were to stay all 
night at Bronkhorst Spruit, where the Boers shot us to 
pieces in '80. The landdrost and fifty burghers have rid- 
den out to meet them. 

Here they come! A veld-kornet rides at the head with 



BEYOND THE BLAAUWBERG 41 

the Transvaal flag — ^the Dutch flag, with the green across 
it — and half a dozen armed Boers follow. Then two Cape 
carts; and in the second, talking with the landdrost, a 
shaggy old man with a long beard, bushy brows, mas- 
terful eyes, and sacs beneath them that hang like dew- 
laps down his cheeks. He wears a markedly Presbyterian 
frock coat, an impossible tall hat, he spits copiously, his 
breast is crossed with a sash, he is followed by a hundred 
loyal Boers on horseback, and is known to all the world 
for Stephanus Johannes Paulus Kruger, master of the 
Transvaal these twenty years, utterly fearless, and great- 
est personality, save one, in all Africa. I see him a young 
man on his Rustenberg farm, a pursuer of big game, 
a daring hunter of lions ; snake bitten, and alone, I see him 
draw a great knife, severing the finger; a field cornet now, 
he leads his men in the native wars, and at Potgieters, 
taking his life in his hand, he enters the kaffirs' cave, 
smoking them out; soon he leads a commando; now he 
rides, a counsellor, to Lydenburg, and with the capital 
removed to Pbtchesfstroom, becomes of the Boers' inner 
circle; I see him later in Pretoria, rallier of the people, 
inspirer of 'Majuba, then the plenipotentiary of peace, 
and ever head and shoulders above his fellows ; lastly, 
full of years and honour, I see him come to Paardekraal ; 
standing by the national cairn, he, the president, exhorts 
his Boer people, and they know him for the greatest of 
their race. 

Go your way, old patriot! Fulfil in storm and stress 
your destiny. Your burghers, clattering along there, es- 
cort to Middelburg a master spirit. 

Greatest save one ! In Adderley Street, a thousand 
miles away — (or is it here, near the fish market) — at the 
top of the street, among the oak trees, in the very shadow 
of Table Mountain, stands Parliament House. Years 
ago, as I wandered past, a man had come down the steps. 



42 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

a thickset man in tweeds and a bowler hat — an English 
gentleman. Crossing the street, to the office of the Char- 
tered Company, he had presently emerged, and entering 
a Cape cart, drawn by two superb horses, had been driven 
rapidly away. 

Save one! And this was he. Premier and dictator, 
and of the race of giants, his presence gave a glory to all 
this peninsula. . . . But Rhodes passed, and the arc 
light of Africa went out. The brooding spirit was gone 
from the slopes of the mountain. The King was dead, 
and lacking his inspiration, men now sank to the old, 
old level. In a brief spasm, crying "We will make Af- 
rica!" they came together in union; but the fine frenzy 
of it passed, with the years, leaving only the husk, and 
the shell, and the hate 

It is dark and silent beside the fish-market. This is my 
last night in Africa, and thoughts of her crowd upon 
me. Let me go where I may sleep. 



CHAPTER IV 

AUSTRALIA TO THE KLONDYKE 

The Elizabethan Age of gold-mining was come. Short 
and brilliant, like its prototype in dramatic literature, this 
lasted a bare twenty years, yet gave to the world the 
wonderful discoveries in the Transvaal, West Australia, 
Colorado, Yukon and Nevada. 

To stretch the analogue: The unapproachable Rand 
was Shakespeare ; Kalgoorlie, so richly veined, doomed to 
so early death, was Marlowe; Cripple Creek, high above 
the world, yet vitally of it, was Sir Philip Sydney; the 
gold dredges — the intrusion into imaginative mining of 
realism — were Ben Jonson; the Klondyke, of a lesser 
calibre, was Massinger; and the adjacent Nevada camps 
of Goldfield and Tonopah were Beaumont and Fletcher. 
The Elizabethan Age began with the discovery of the 
Rand in 1886. Colorado and West Australia followed 
in the early *90s. Klondyke was found in ^97, and the 
Nevada finds carried the era into the new century. By 
1906 the period of great discovery was over, and gold 
mining entering into a twilight. But that is to anticipate. 
In 1898 the Elizabethan era was in its zenith; and in 
January of that year, sitting in my London hotel, I vowed 
to go down every gold mine in the world. 

First, I went to Mysore. In this Native State of South- 
em India, in a bare, rolling country, a number of English 
companies had been mining for years. They worked one 
continuous reef, several miles long, whose value and per- 
manence, even then, classed it about the finest quartz 
vein ever known. 

43 



44 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

Each morning, very early, I went underground, and by 
mid-day my inspection was over. The hauHng engines 
being driven by natives, riding in the skips was forbidden, 
and in the great heat, from depths of looo or 1500 feet, 
I cHmbed the ladders to the surface. Arriving there in 
a profuse sweat, I was met by a native bearing a woolen 
overcoat, wrapped in this, escorted to a hot bath, and 
presently found myself seated beside the manager at 
breakfast. The service was perfection,, the cooking 
dainty, while such luxuries as oysters and prawns from 
the Malabar Coast, and strawberries from Bangalore, 
were served in my honour. 

I will not say the delicious eating influenced my judg- 
ment of the Mysore mines, but to one newly from South 
Africa it was something of a revelation. On the fields 
there the food was rough, and the service by Kaffir wait- 
ers ready. In the mine boarding houses the usual dish 
was a stew known as "Cabbage Brady" ; one could locate 
the cabbage, but whether the Brady was the Irish part 
of the stew, or a corruption of braisee^ I could never de- 
termine. At even the best African hotels, the pouring of 
mint sauce was held to transmute mutton into lamb, and 
the cuisine of the average hostel was slovenly and poor. 
In a paper I once picked up, a paper of the catering trade, 
a letter signed ''African Hotel-keeper" caught my eye. 
It began: ''When I give my guests turkey, I serve it 
boiled, with a good bechamel sauce." "When you do!" 
I murmured. . . . 

As house servant, the Indian was altogether the Kaf- 
fir's superior ; as miner, the positions were reversed. Un- 
derground, nimbleness of mind does not offset muscle, 
nor can vegetarian compete with meat eater, and I esti- 
mated it took three coolie miners to do the work of the 
average Kaffir. Not but that the Indian would respond to 
feeding. Even as I made my estimates, some profes- 



AUSTRALIA TO THE KLONDYKE 45 

sional wrestlers arrived from Bangalore. Seated with 
the mine managers above the throng, where we were 
scented and garlanded by the native impresario^ I saw 
men as strong as elephants struggle furiously together. 

I went on to Australia. The West Australian "boom" 
was just beginning. Famous Coolgardie, discovered some 
years before, was a dying field, but the mines at Kal- 
gooriie, twenty miles away, were now developing phe- 
nomenally. Many of the smaller camps, too, in this 
goldfield some hundreds of miles long, reported good 
finds. A railroad from the coast already served Kal- 
goorlie, and a short branch was about to be opened to 
Kanowna. Here, where quartz was mined, they had 
come upon gold-bearing gravel in an old river bed; as 
this passed shallow, and very rich, under the cemetery, 
the coffins of Kanowna's dead were lowered, and the 
gravel which lay about them ''cleaned up." 

This great Westralian goldfield was a desert: that is 
to say, a waterless region, where no grass grew, but only 
low scrub, and saltbush, and in parts an endless forest 
of the smaller gums. There was no rainfall worth men- 
tion, and they condensed the brackish water out of the 
mines. In the bathroom of the Kalgoorlie hotel, I stood 
beneath a diminutive reservoir, pulled a string, felt a 
trickle down the back, and paid two shillings; it was 
cheaper to buy liquor than water, and one saw numbers 
in the streets who had taken full advantage of this. 

But the climate was buoyant, well-nigh perfect, and 
one passed from camp to camp, over hundreds of miles, 
with never a cloud in the sky. Sometimes I drove by 
night; and in the moonlight saw trains of loaded camels, 
with their Pathan drivers, travelling silently to outlying 
mines. There was the coastal belt, too, a watered and 
parklike country of great fertility; one realised Wes- 



46 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

tralia's future would one day lie here. At Broome, far 
up the coast, the fleet of pearling schooners was assem- 
bled. The owners were whites, the divers were Cingalese, 
Japanese, Filipinos and Malays, and the schooners were 
manned by the half-caste riff-raff of the Eastern Seas. 
A number of the aborigines hung about this place, fol- 
lowed by troops of mongrel dogs; they were loafers and 
drunkards, and their women the chattels of the pearling 
fleet. At Broome, I saw a native throw the boomerang. 
He was undersized and deformed; but the missile went 
from his hand like a swift bird, hummed in the air, com- 
pleted two long swinging circles, and fell beside his 
feet. 

Of the Eastern colonies I renewed boyish knowledge, 
breaking much fresh ground. Queensland, a great min- 
ing country, was ranged from end to end. There I was 
"salted." To me, panning his * 'prospect," came an old 
Irishman from his hut — risen from a bed of fever. But 
I saw him, with devilment undimmed, place pilules of mud 
stealthily upon a ledge, which were presently gone, and 
all round the rim of my pan shone a streak of gold. At 
Charters Towers, a new shaft had been sunk. This was 
2500 feet deep, and being not yet equipped with guides 
and cage, was served by a bucket. The manager and I 
stood upon the bucket's rim, and were lowered ; but half 
way down there came a spin on the rope, and soon we 
were going round like a teetotimi. At the bottom, how 
reached I hardly knew, the old manager put his head 
between his hands and sighed; he was as sick as a dog. 
For myself, I decided that a sinking bucket without 
guides, and a drop of 2500 feet, was hardly good enough. 

At the Charters Towers races, a great festival of North 
Queensland, the sun shone brightly, the gentry paraded, 
the cup candidates were led back and forth, and above 
the stentorian voices of bookmakers a band played lively 



AUSTRALIA TO THE KLONDYKE 47 

music. By himself on the green lawn, all imconsidered, 
sat a native boy, a nurse to some up-country squatter's 
lady, landed suddenly here in the great world. He sat 
there watching, deathly still, utterly overawed. He was 
twelve years old, his English the purest that tongue ever 
spoke, and he asked me if he had come to heaven. Poor 
little man! Consumption, drink, syphilis, the spear — 
whichever it may be — your road to heaven did not lie 
across the Towers* green lawn. 

Ever and anon I found myself in Sydney, and after- 
noons, if it were fine weather, you might have seen me 
in the Domain, stretched luxuriantly on the grass, a 
"Bulletin" covering my face. You would have thought 
me asleep; but oftener I lay there thinking. Down the 
slopes was the vista of the harbour; a hundred pleasant 
homes stood about each cove, and the ferry boats went 
plying among them unceasingly. Other recumbent fig- 
ures, heedless like myself of the conventions, shared the 
Domain. Mostly there were the deadbeats of Sydney, as 
like as not dossed there for the night — drunkards to a 
man, members of a considerable legion throughout this 
continent ; for drink was rampant out here. At any given 
moment, I reflected, a thousand Irish publicans up and 
down Australia were in the act of drawing beer. 

These were the Antipodes ! — I kept saying to myself. 
This, twelve thousand miles away, was the world imder- 
neath! And what a rich and rare world too. Brilliant 
birds, weird animals, strange trees, a sombre beauty were 
for the looking; and over the land were gold and silver 
and copper, coalfields, vineyards and orchards, wheat 
plains, dairy pastures, and endless merino flocks cropping 
the rich feed. 

You would have thought to see the Australians thickly 
spread over this glorious champaign. But excepting a 
picked minority, they were not. These men of our race, 



48 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

inheritors of one of the world's choicest tracts, had 
viewed it, had fled from it as from the plague, and were 
crowded in their coastal cities, till the capital of each state 
held nearly half that state's people. 

Up and down these cities' streets moved crowds of 
meat- fed men and women, well-dressed, prosperous, full 
of their own worth, to whom Europe was but a name. 
With rare exception, these people were whites, and I 
found the cardinal policy of the country based on this 
fact. Australia has set out on a great experiment. Her 
aborigines are dead, or dying out fast. The Chinese, who 
came in the early mining days, are mostly gone away. 
The Kanakas, brought in to work the sugar fields of 
Queensland, have been sent back to the Islands, and this 
great continent is now solely the heritage of whites. 
Australians have determined it shall remain so. They 
deny entrance to the coloured peoples ; they place certain 
tests of entry upon even the lower whites, and profess 
their aim is to build up, in this far Southern land, a 
super-race of best Caucasian strain. 

A fine ideal ! — and yet not without alloy. Our natives 
of British India may not enter here. And amongst the 
races on whom exclusion falls are the Japanese. But 
the Japanese are a powerful people, and to avenge con- 
tumely of this sort are capable of blowing the Australian 
cities to bits. One thing only may be expected to restrain 
them — the prestige of Britain; and the ideal of a * White 
Australia" always assumes the British fleet to be lying 
round the comer. 

The real meaning of a "White Australia," the meaning 
of a million wage-earners, and of nine out of ten Aus- 
tralians, is the keeping out of cheap, coloured labour. 
Thus far it has been kept out; and in high wages, and 
conditions of life, Australia has become white labour's 
paradise. But no man, no class, can stand continued 



AUSTRALIA TO THE KLONDYKE 49 

prosperity; it seems to me that in gaining the whole 
world, labour in Australia is losing her own soul. 

I would cavil at no ideal ; but to be white outwardly — 
is that everything? It is much, certainly: therefore I say 
*'Be white!" Yet the dregs of Europe can be that. To 
be white within — of a true strain, worthy to hold and en- 
joy, is Australia's ideal as I see it. Not again, in this 
world's history, will five millions have the shaping of so 
splendid a heritage; and Australia will be *'White" so 
long as the people realise their heritage, pull together, and 
work as their fathers did. 

There is just one group of Asiatics they tolerate here 
— ^the Chinese market-gardeners. These are to be found 
all over Australia; and in a land where hard manual toil 
is no longer the tradition, they work early and work late, 
asking no man's pity. How green their gardens are! 
How well ordered their vegetable rotation! Many a 
time I have seen them watering far into the night. To 
their slovenly white neighbours, lolling round the public 
houses, they are just "bloody Chows" ; yet each is a 
master of his craft, and if hard work comes first in the 
eyes of God, is heading for a garden in the Elysian Fields. 

List to the annals of Wing Lee, of the Province of 
Canton, market gardener, who died in his shanty by the 
Victoria Bridge, Melbourne, and went straight to heaven. 
The words are spoken by the Recording Angel, who has 
led him by the hand to the foot of the Throne : 

**He was a great gambler. At times his morals were 
unspeakable. Yet he was a master toiler all his life, who 
died worn out, his duty on earth far, far more than done. 
None worked like him. None grew vegetables so succu- 
lent. In his forty-three years of working life he grew 
over one million lettuces, one hundred and ten thousand 
cabbages, one hundred and fifty tons of tomatoes, forty- 



50 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

eight tons of French beans, eighty-eight thousand heads 
of celery, seventy thousand bunches of shalots, and nine- 
teen thousand vegetable marrows." 

*'Well done, thou good and faithful servant !'* A voice, 
deep, sweet, unutterably soothing, has spoken. Wing Lee 
is terribly afraid; but for the support of the Recording 
Angel he would fall. His seat is with those on the Im- 
mediate Right Hand. Yet he does not comprehend. His 
tongue cleaves to the roof of his mouth and his half- 
paralysed lips murmur ''Whafifor?" 

The "bush" was Australia to me, not the cities. I had 
not forgotten that first landing on the North Shore; I 
recalled, as it had been yesterday, the drive to Lome, the 
giant gum trees along the Glenelg, the wheeling of in- 
numerable flights of parrots in the sun. Now, I had 
sailed on the Hawkesbury and on the Gippsland Lakes, 
had viewed the Blue Mountains and the Barron Falls, 
and the Western forests of Tasmania, and I had plucked 
the wild flowers on the ranges out from Perth. 

September, the first month of spring, is a magic month 
in the bush. The nights are chill — in the South, indeed, 
they are cold — but they are placid, and the sun often 
comes bursting into a cloudless sky. In a moment the 
magpies break into their morning song, into cadences 
more liquid, more languishing than were ever played on 
a flute ; for an hour now they will keep at their singing. 
The flights of rosellas begin to pass overhead, flying at 
a great speed, and calling sharply to each other; the richer 
hued lories will soon be careering from tree to tree. It 
is cool and fresh in the forests; the gums are never 
crowded together, and the sunlight is playing freely upon 
their mottled, peeling trunks. Do not fail to crush the 
young leaves in your hand and sniff their fragrance. Here 
is a stretch, though, which will never mottle more; it has 



AUSTRALIA TO THE KLONDYKE 51 

been "ring-barked" by some selector. Beyond it lies his 
clearing, fenced with stout post and rail ; charred stumps 
and ghostly trunks still stand in it, but already the green 
grass has sprung up thick and deep. Each little while 
the air is heavy with a strong and exquisite smell. It is 
the scent of the wattle blossom; a mother tree and many 
seedlings hang thick with their yellow flowers. Yonder 
stands the selector's hut; and on the grass near it, this 
September morning, peach trees are blossoming. Gaze 
your fill, for anything so pink, so ethereal, against the 
eucalyptus forest, you have never seen in your dreams; 
Sydney and Melbourne in all their glory were never ar- 
rayed like one of these. 

Many an hour I lay under the gums and wattles. I 
read the Australian poets as I lay, and knew what the 
bush had meant to them. In the heat of the day I saw 
nature droop; in the cool darkness, when the Southern 
Cross hung low in the sky, I saw her most bounteously 
replenished. 

"When night doth her glories 

Of starshine unfold, 
'Tis then that the stories 
Of bushland are told." 

"How true!" cried I, lying in the dark unaer the gums; 
but I was my own story-teller. And as the sounds of the 
night came to me, one by one, so I murmured with 
"Banjo" : 

"Beyond all denials 

The stars in their glories. 
The breeze in the myalls, 

Are part of these stories. 
The waving of grasses 

The song of the river 
That sings as it passes 

For ever and ever" . . . 

My work calling me, I passed on. And presently I 
found myself in the Andes in South America. The 



m THIS WORLD OF OURS 

mines there, lying mostly in Chile, Bolivia and Peru, have 
been worked from early Spanish times. Cerro de Pasco, 
in Peru, was worked for silver in 1630, and the mountain 
of Potosi, in Bolivia, greatest of all silver mines, as early 
as 1545. The chief metals in the Andean mines are sil- 
ver, copper and tin. They carry almost no gold ; the gold 
of the Incas, hoarded at Cuzco, seized so treacherously by 
Pizarro, almost certainly came from the alluvial gravels 
of Madre de Dios, far east of the mountains. 

These minerals lie at great heights. In Chile, inspect- 
ing mines, I had to ascend to 8000 feet, in Bolivia to 
16,000 feet, in Peru to 16,500 feet. Potosi lies at 16,000 
feet. From its peak, you may see the cone of Chorolque 
far in the south, nearly 18,000 feet, rich in tin and bis- 
muth, the highest mine in the world. Standing on the 
Morococha mountains, in Peru, I noted the deep staining 
of the rocks, the tremendous mineralisation, and could 
have located a hundred deposits of silver, copper, lead 
and zinc in a radius of ten miles. This was at 15,000 
feet. On the horizon rose vast and yet higher ranges, 
resting under their deep, eternal snows ; and I brooded on 
the immense wealth lying quite surely there, yet for ever 
unattainable. 

These Andean mines lie far above the pleasant and 
beautiful places of the world. Not a tree, not a flower, 
hardly a blade of grass is seen. There is no comfort. 
Food is bad. Bleak winds sweep the mountains. The 
air is very thm, and one wakes in the night straining for 
breath. Pnetmionia is prevalent, and always fatal, and 
the heart works under a heavy strain. By hard work 
alone, up here, shall a man save his soul. 

Such are the conditions. And to such, from the flesh- 
pots of Egypt, two that I know returned. They owned 
a mine high up in Peru — a great mine, which their man- 
ager had run on the rocks. One was a rich man, an 



AUSTRALIA TO THE EXONDYKE 5d 

American, one of those men who do things, and over 
sixty years old. He left his white villa in Nice, he left 
his young wife and family, and went. The other, an 
Englishman born in Chile, was badly hit. Retired, he 
was settled near Rugby, a hunting man, with a dozen 
horses in his stable. Selling all these with his estate, he 
sailed back to Callao. They knew their work, these two. 
The American went up to the mine, the hunting man ran 
the office down at Lima, and in three years they pulled 
things round. The copper market rose, and the future 
of the concern, now soundly worked, was assured. I 
stayed at the mine in those days. The old American, a 
man of great power, rose at five each morning, wrapped 
himself warmly, and went out in the dark to await the 
changing of the shifts. He worked long, intense hours; 
he had not left the mine for three years, and his labours 
now drew to a close. He showed me his family photo- 
graphs, and already counted the weeks till his return to 
Nice. He was now very rich indeed. More than that, he 
had shown himself a big man. Then he went down with 
pneumonia, and in a night he was dead. 

The mines of the Andes, all told, have yielded fabulous 
wealth. In the early days, the Kings of Spain received 
one-fifth the gold and silver. There is no doubt this 
royalty ran into htindreds of millions sterling, giving 
Spain the position she held so long in Europe There is 
a man in Bolivia to-day whose tin mines clear an annual 
profit of six hundred thousand pounds. A few years 
ago, invoice clerk to an Antofagasta store, he drew his 
three pounds a week. There was an English surveyor I 
met in Oruro. He had lived there, at 13,000 feet, for 
twenty-eight years, working tin, and was about to retire 
with half a million. Stationed in Oruro, too, were a 
group of Scotsmen — Aberdeen fishermen at one time — 
whose collective profits in tin must now total a million 



54> THIS WORLD OF OURS 

pounds. Fate has been capricious in these enrichings; 
at one end of the scale an invoice clerk, and sundry fisher- 
men, and at the other, so it was whispered, his Majesty 
of Saxony, holding one-half of all Chorolque. But these 
prizes are not to be had for the asking. These remote 
Andean mines, like all sources of wealth, soon pass into 
the hands of the strong and resourceful; and once in 
these hands, there they stay. 

My mining vow (and my retaining fees) took me to 
Siberia. From Vladivostock, on the Pacific Coast of 
Siberia, a railroad runs north to Khabarovsk, on the 
Amur River; it was midwinter there, and I recall how, 
lying back in my sledge, I drove out of Khabarovsk at a 
hand-gallop, boimd for the gold mines. We travelled day 
and night, mostly on the river ice, stopping at some cos- 
sack post each third or fourth hour, to change horses. 
The country rose and fell in long swells — a frozen waste ; 
hardly was it relieved by the forests of birch : their trunks 
were white as the snow itself, so that a ghostly filigree 
of bare branches floated in the air. The days were sunny, 
the long nights starry; and under the stars, one dead of 
night, I came near disaster. In the intensity of the cold, 
the Amur was now freezing from the bottom, up. Under 
so great pressure, water kept bursting the surface ice, 
lying upon it in lakes a foot or two deep, and forming, 
until frozen solid, a treacherous surface. On to such 
false ice, at a midnight, galloped my horses and sledge, 
and in a moment we had crashed through into two feet 
of water. There followed a bout of the fiercest lashing 
— without avail; the beasts could find no footing, the 
heavy sledge but settled itself the deeper. There we were, 
under the Siberian stars, ten miles from a post, at 20° 
below zero ! In a few minutes the ice would form again. 
A little later, sledge and horses would be frozen solidly 



AUSTRALIA TO THE ICLONDYKE 55 

in. We said not a word, but casting off our heavy furs, 
the cossack driver, my companion and myself stepped into 
the water. But most gingerly. Our felt boots reached 
above the knees; let the water, which lapped within an 
inch or two, but flow into the boots, and our own limbs 
were in jeopardy. And then we shoved. I know I shoved 
till the sweat rolled off, till the blood came in my eyes 
and nostrils; and all the time the cossack lashed and 
yelled, laying on terrible oaths with his whip. We were 
dead beat, horses and men, utterly done ; the stars reeled 
overhead; I thought my eyeballs had burst; I knew our 
utmost strength had failed — -and then the front ice held! 
With a groan, the heavy sledge slid up, and we were safe. 

At the mines, reached after ten days and nights, there 
was a month's work. The gravel had to be tested. A 
series of pits were sunk into it, and to thaw each frozen 
pit, a foot at a time, the Koreans were set to build log 
fires. A stunted forest covered most of the country, all 
white now, and terribly lonely; to the nearest post office 
was five hundred miles, and to the railway, twelve hun- 
dred. But the task ended at last, and my sledge brought 
me back to it. 

In course of time, still hard at work, I found myself on 
the Gold Coast, a country truly named. Gold was widely 
distributed there; but how to win it at a profit raised 
problems almost unsolvable. The West African Coast 
in this region is one great forest, stretching far into the 
interior. It is a land where the heat is intense, rains fall 
incessantly for months, and mosquitoes infect the blood 
with virulent malaria ; where life is dreary, and all things 
tend to a lowering of the system. 

The most capable men rarely went there. The men 
who did go often lived recklessly, many of them drinking 
to excess. The mines suffered, of course; but the greater 
damage was to the natives. Black and curly pated, they 



56 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

were a most astute people. Gold stealers, malingerers by 
instinct, contact with Europeans had rounded them off in 
economic sophistication. Secretly hating the white man, 
and no longer respecting him, they were prepared, on their 
own terms, to take his pay; but a thousand natives, subtly 
imdisciplined, failing day to day to render an honest day's 
work, would lop the profits from any mine. 

In a hammock, slung upon the shoulders of four men, 
I was carried over the forest trails. It was a forest of 
giant trees in the main, reaching straight up for the sun- 
light; in the high branches a chattering and leaping of 
monkeys would break out, but the greater denizens, the 
chimpanzees and gorillas, never showed themselves. In 
a clearing would stand the huts of a village, plantains and 
yams growing around, and I seemed to read in the eyes 
of the villagers a lesser respect than I was used to. One 
midnight, outside Kumasi, I heard their drums beating, 
but I never entered the Ashanti capital. They will not 
fight us again with the sword, though. These tribes are 
learning English, and have been told all men are equal in 
God's sight; they prefer now to take their troubles into 
court. 

In the Western States of America I spent memorable 
mining days. Good fortune led me to Colorado in Octo- 
ber, the time of the Indian Summer. The city of Denver, 
and the surrounding prairie lie at 5000 feet, and in this 
buoyant yet balmy air one finds for a month or six weeks 
at this time climatic perfection. In the Colorado moun- 
tains were many gold mines, often lying above 10,000 
feet high ; railways ran into the valleys below, and I recall 
the long upward rides on horseback through pine woods, 
the timber line, the gradual stunting of all vegetation, and 
the barren slopes that merged into the snows. 

Hundreds of miners were collected on these heights. 



AUSTRALIA TO THE ICLONDYKE 57 

Foreigners to a man — Finns, Ruthenians, Slovaks and 
Italians — they worked skilfully, and received big pay. 
They earned on an average some $3.50 for an eight-hour 
day, and for $1.00 a day were warmly housed and su- 
perbly fed by the companies. Living as it were a monastic 
life, gorging red meat three times a day, their prevailing 
mood always seemed to me a moroseness ; while toward 
the mine authorities they were hostile for choice. At one 
mine I visited there was a strike. The manager, a strong 
man, was warned in my presence his life was in danger, 
but refused to be coerced. Two days later he was shot, 
and died as they carried him down the mountain. 

Besides the quartz mines, a new industry was now win- 
ning Calif ornian gold. Modelled on the earlier New 
Zealand type, but improved mechanically, powerful 
dredges, floated on pontoons, dug and sluiced the old 
gravels worked by the miners of '49, Some of these areas, 
now covered by soil, were flourishing fruit orchards, but 
once their dredging value became known, prunes, pears 
and olives were sacrificed with no compunction at all. 

I saw what was to be seen of mines from British Co- 
lumbia down to Old Mexico. British Columbia, in those 
spacious Elizabethan days, was passing through her own 
gold boom. It came eventually to nothing, or almost 
nothing ; but the Rossland goldfield, high on the slopes of 
the wooded mountains in Kootenay, looked just then to be 
very good indeed ; a year later it had been bottomed. All 
sorts of small mines were being heralded in the colonial 
press, and I passed by lake and forest and mountain trail 
to view many a prospect. 

A summer being come, I headed for Alaska. In 1867, 
for a paltry $7,200,000, the United States bought this 
great land from Russia. It was to prove one of the fin- 
est purchases on record. Alaska's furs and timbers had 
been figured on at the time ; but the widely spread mining 



58 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

dq>osits of gold, copper and coal, since discovered, were 
an unexpected asset. 

And there were the fisheries. Into the estuaries and 
creeks, at this season of the year, salmon were heading 
by the million. Canning factories, dotted along the coast, 
received the immense catches, and now worked day and 
night. They were manned by Japanese; whose appear- 
ance, bared to the waist and covered with blood, holding 
a long knife, beheading and devisee rating salmon as it 
were in rhythm, amid the steam and the stench and the 
dim light, was truly diabolic. Along the Southern Alaska 
coasts, forests, mountains, and glaciers blend in extreme 
grandeur, and the sea below them lies calm. For some 
hundreds of miles a chain of wooded islands runs par- 
allel with the mainland. Now two miles wide, now no 
more than a hundred yards, this long channel was plain 
sailing by day ; but at night there were no guiding lights 
from beginning to end. On moonless nights, the captain 
of the little steamer stood watch in hand, pulling ever 
and anon at the syren; and between a strict timing, and 
the echoes off the islands or the mainland, worked himself 
safely through. 

I found myself at Skagway, point of entrance to the 
Far North. This Alaskan town lay at the end of a fjord. 
On the mountains above one saw the Chilkoot Pass, 
where, in preceding winters, hundreds of wayfarers to 
Klondyke had sunk lying in the snow. 

The lately built White Pass Railroad, running out of 
Skagway, carried me across the mountains into Canadian 
territory, where it traversed a wide expanse of Arctic 
moorland. In the midst of this lay a chain of lakes, and 
the new goldfield of Atlin. 

Riding out one day from Atlin, on a tour of the scat- 
tered alluvial mines, night overtook me, and I drew up 
at the only dwelling to be seen for miles around. The 



AUSTRALIA TO THE KLONDYKE 59 

traveller in these parts is entitled to expect a night's 
shelter; but when an elderly man threw open the door, 
welcomed me, and himself led my horse to the rude stable, 
I knew this was to be something more. I was cold and 
hungry. The old man and his son, living alone in this 
log cabin, cooked me a good supper, indicated the best 
bed in the shanty as mine for the night, and to my sur- 
prise produced some bed linen from a trunk, which they 
spread for me. But before we turned in, the fire was 
replenished with logs, and I sat for hours listening to a 
magnetic talker, and the tale of a strenuous life. 

They were Americans from far off Minnesota. The 
father had been a notable flour miller, and at one time 
mayor of Minneapolis. Some turn in life's wheel, which 
I imagine to have been over-speculation in his own com- 
modity, had brought him down in the world, and to Atlin 
in search of gold. There were those who would have 
called him a failure; yet to me he was of the best of the 
earth. 

I returned to the railroad, and came to the terminus at 
White Horse, a settlement on Yukon River. From here 
to Klondyke was 500 miles, down stream, through a 
wilderness; shallow-draught steamers were sailing every 
day, and on the third day out of White Horse, I landed 
at Dawson City. 

The Klondyke, sooner or later, was to disillusion most 
of those who went there. But at this time, before its 
capacity had yet been proved, men were pouring in, the 
population of the district numbered 20,000, money circu- 
lated, and the wooden town on the banks of Yukon throve. 

The gravel in the creeks and on the ^'benches" was rich 
enough. Indeed it was extremely rich, and in California 
or Australia would have yielded immense profit; but 
here, far, far beyond civilisation, where a man's wage 
was $7 a day, stores a prohibitive price, and with no 



60 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

natural water-power for sluicing, the economic factor 
was strained to the utmost. The gold lay mostly on the 
bedrock, under perhaps six feet of gravel. I saw wonder- 
ful ground cleaned up; but estimated the owners were 
losing by theft. 

The different creeks of the Klondyke lay five to ten 
miles apart. Ranges of hills separated these, covered 
with a low forest of birch, spruce and juniper, and from 
the mossy ground sprang innumerable blueberries, here 
found in perfection. The distant shot of a hunter rang 
now and again through the autumn woods, but the bigger 
game of the region was already scared away. 

A reasonably good meal at Dawson cost a dollar ; and 
for a helping of turkey or chicken, brought up the Yukon 
in cold storage, one paid another fifty cents. Liquor, and 
the ladies, came a good deal higher; that is to say, an 
evening in a dancing saloon, with suitable liquid refresh- 
ment for self and partner, ran into big money. The 
saloon supplied both. On entering, one saw perhaps a 
dozen young women, American and Canadian, retained 
for dancing, and as the music struck up you chose your 
partner. A dance cost $i. It lasted an absurdly short 
time. You then led the lady, or, if dilatory, were led by 
her, to a counter, where you paid another $i, and beer 
was dispensed to both. The lady now received two card- 
board tickets. These were *'good-fors" or bonuses, one 
for the dance, one for the drink; they represented fifteen 
cents each, in cash, and she thrust them down the back of 
her stocking for safe custody. 

One night, being enamoured of a good-looking girl, I 
was induced to dance to the extent of $io, a like amount 
going, pari passu, for beer. As I did not drink beer, she 
quaffed my portions also, and it amazed me that her 
slender outline showed no sign of strain. What did swell 



AUSTRALIA TO THE KLONDYKE 61 

notably was the back of her leg, with bonus tickets. Could 
this be calf love? 

The Yukon Territory had been duly constituted. A 
governor was sent up from Ottawa, and drafts of the 
North West Mounted Police kept law and order. A man 
had already been hanged in Dawson. Building a hut 
where the long winter trail crossed a lake, he was known 
to have shot several lonely travellers, robbed the bodies 
of their gold, and dropped them through a hole in the ice. 
Suspicion was fastened on him by the behaviour of a 
dog, the property of one of his victims. When his own 
turn came, this hardened criminal had to be dragged to 
the scaffold in a state of collapse. 

I left the Klondyke in early October, when the nights 
already froze, and another week should see the closing 
of the river for winter. The forest-clad hills that lined 
the banks were now a deep yellow, and in their reflection 
the Yukon became a river of flowing gold. But when the 
sun had set, and the river lay in the black of night, this 
northern land became a chill and desolate waste. 



CHAPTER V 

AFRICAN SCENES 

Of my mining work in Mexico, Russia, Burma, the 
Malay States, Hungary, Bohemia, Norway, Sweden and 
other countries there is no need to speak. But there 
came a day when my vow, made years before in the Lon- 
don hotel, was duly performed. I had been down almost 
every gold mine of note. My tally came to over five hun- 
dred mines, in thirty-eight countries; and I felt I had 
seen enough. I was still the right side of forty. But I 
had now made enough money to see me through, and 
when I put to myself the question "More money — or 
travel ?" the answer "Travel !" was loud and determined. 

I liked money, of course. But I was not a "hog." 
Having made enough, my "travel-chart" interested me 
more than my bank book; and that, having the choice, 
I chose the better part, I have not the faintest doubt. A 
distinguished American engineer said to me: "They 
tell me it's a pity you have gone out of business. But 
my idea is you are the wisest of us all." 

So I quit : with a reasonable income, a deep experience, 
an impressionable mind — ready to absorb this World 
of Ours, and if I could, to fathom it. I was now — as 
every thinker must become — an agnostic. The more I 
saw, the less I understood. Such explanations as Gods 
and Miracles meant nothing to me at all. But I wor- 
shipped Nature. Life and Energy were my marvels, and 
the beauty and underlying horror of the World. 

62 



AFRICAN SCENES 63 

And how these spoke to me, I shall endeavour to tell. 

First, the African threads must be gathered together. 
Of South Africa and West I have written. Those jour- 
neys into Morocco, Algeria, Tunis, Egypt, Sudan, Abys- 
sinia and B.E.A. covering North, East and part of the 
Centre — ^will form this chapter. North Africa, where I 
am now heading, is all Mahomedan — countries of Moors 
and Arabs; and for that very reason I set out thither 
from Toledo, lying in the heart of Spain. 

The Moors once held this town; and although driven 
from it eight centuries ago, their impress remains. In 
the Gothic Cathedral of Toledo, on the keyboard of an 
organ that can swell to shake the vast building, I heard 
played an air so delicate, so minor, so Mahomedan, that 
it seemed as if an Arab played on his pipe. Then, at 
Seville some days after, I stood by the banks of Guadal- 
quivir. In a nearby wineshop, a gramophone reeled off 
the songs of Spain, and to me listening, those high, 
strained voices in the minor key, the quaver, and the halt- 
ing rhythm, were the singing voices of Stamboul and 
Damascus over again. Spanish song is Mahomedan 
through and through. 

The last seat of Moorish dominion in Spain was 
Granada. The town lay under the hills, and the Alham- 
bra — the Moorish King's palace — rose along the spur 
above. I do not know if this spur was all wooded with, 
elms and beeches, whether the birds sang blithely, and 
water ran crystal-clear in the runnels then as to-day ; but 
such was the bent of those old Moors that I feel these 
things must have been. Across a vale from the Alham- 
bra rises the hill Albaicin, where some hundreds of fam- 
ilies of gipsies make their home. Their caves are hol- 
lowed in the conglomerate, and the whitewashed fronts, 
glint through a maze of prickly pear. 



64 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

Westward from Granada stretches a plain. On to this, 
in those Moorish days, there came marching at last a 
great Christian cavalcade. Isabella of Castile rode at 
its head, with Ferdinand ; and having laid out on the plain 
the town of Santa Fe, that is still a town, they sat down 
to the investment of the last Moorish King. Here, too, 
came Christopher Columbus, seeking financial help from 
Isabella for a certain expedition; and here, after hesita- 
tion and delay, the contract between them was signed. 

A few months later all was over. Granada had capit- 
ulated. It went to the victors, and the Moors were to 
leave the country. The Jews were to go too. Spain was 
turning out her finest people — men who had brought to 
her soil fertility, to her schools learning, to her monu- 
ments beauty. It was the worst day's work in all her 
history. But little she cared. Holy Mother Church had 
triumphed, and these religious fanatics, obsessed, fell on 
each other's necks weeping for joy. All Europe rejoiced 
with them, and at London, by order of Henry VH, a 
Te Deum was sung in St. Paul's Cathedral. 

I stood on that long spit of land whose point is Cadiz. 
A town of dazzling whiteness, rising to a bold headland, 
its fine harbour lay below, and across the bay rose up the 
Andalusian Coast. Cadiz was never a Moorish town. 
But from these cliffs, half hidden now in blossom of 
geranium, many an Arab had gazed his last on Spain; 
and thence descending, had hoisted his lateen, rounded 
the town's bold headland, and sailed away. Some went 
to the Yemen, and some to Bagdad. Others sailed to 
Egypt, and to Tripoli; and very many passed across to 
their satrapy of Morocco, that was now become a king- 
dom. 

Had I been a Moor, cast out of Spain, I had settled at 
Marrakesh. In Southern Morocco, a hundred miles in- 



AFRICAN SCENES 65 

land across the plain, this town lay, as it lies to-day, in a 
wide oasis of date palms and almonds and apricots. The 
Shireefs loved to dwell in Marrakesh. There they built 
palaces ; there they were buried; the tombs of Sultan Man- 
sour, and of his mother, all mosaics and coloured tiling, 
are among my great memories. 

Here is the wide Marrakesh market place. These 
many men who come and go are Moors, Berbers and 
Jews; but their women are not abroad, or go heavily 
veiled. The lower-caste women who pass are Bedouin 
from the countryside ; with their men, they have brought 
supplies into the city. These trains of mules and camels 
carry building stone and charcoal, and these many don- 
keys which pass are laden with barrels of fresh water, 
with forage, and crates of oranges. Here are shep- 
herds, from the butchers' stalls, driving sheep and goats 
to the slaughter, and old women hawking live fowls, 
which hang head down from their skinny hands. On 
the returning donkeys, seated bareback over the buttocks, 
urchins are riding; and they wallop the brutes like any- 
thing, cursing them in the name of the Prophet, and of 
his daughter Fatima. 

On the outskirts of Marrakesh, in the domain of the 
Sultan's palace, I ascended a kiosk, and came out on the 
flat roof. Below me spread a mile of verdure: olive 
trees, old and massy, orange trees hanging with their yel- 
low fruit, and in their midst an artificial lake. The air 
was balmy, the sky cloudless, and as I raised my eyes, they 
lighted for the first time on the High Atlas, far in the 
South, all white with snow for a hundred miles. 

Fez, Morocco's other capital, some hundreds of miles 
North, is a walled city. Viewed from the hills around, 
it lies there white and flat, with many minarets, and about 
it fruit orchards and spacious cemeteries. But enter. 
Pass through the quarter of the Jews, into the Mahome- 



66 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

dan city of the Berbers and the Moors, and you will find 
Fez built steeply upon hillsides, many sunless labyrinths 
leading down to its twilight heart. Here, in lanes but a 
span wide, are the finest bazaars in Africa, craftsmen 
plying all the trades, a dense humanity; and here, too, 
are many mosques, thatched with green tiles, which you 
may not enter. 

Mount to this roof, near the city's base; breathe the 
fresh air, and feel the warm March sun. Fez, the white, 
rises around you in tiers. Below you rushes a stream; 
this is the tanners' quarter, and in a thousand small cis- 
terns around skins are being soaked and dyed. This is 
the heart o'f Fez, yet across the rushing stream lie 
orchards ; oranges and lemons hang from the trees, apples 
are in blossom, and the apricots are full lefafed. Many 
white egrets perch in the branches, and cranes, guarding 
their nests, stajid upon high walls around. It is now 
four o'clock, and at the minarets they have just hoisted 
a triangular flag; as the chanting of the muezzins begins, 
a tanner, with many skins to be dried, claims my roof, 
and I descend. 

But old Morocco passes away. France now occupies 
these stretches, building fine roads and bridges, and 
French motor-cars now traverse these plains. Numbers 
of Algerian-born French have crossed the frontier, mu- 
tual trade has sprung up with the Moors, and the rela- 
tions between the two ameliorate. 

The Spanish zone, where Morocco lies along the Med- 
iterranean, is mostly mountainous, and less easily sub- 
dued. Upon a plain here, as I passed through, the peo- 
ple held their weekly fair; in this throng moved many of 
the Berber tribesmen, bitter haters of Spain, while in the 
mountains, a league away, men sat fingering their rifles. 
But this phase will quickly pass. Neither Moor nor Ber- 
ber is again destined to govern in this land. Moreover, 



AFRICAN SCENES 67 

they are keen traders, and they love the fleshpots of Eu- 
rope; I see them soon reconciled to their fate. 

Heading Eastward from Morocco, I enter the coastal 
belt of Algeria, where the French have been settled these 
many years. This sunny land yields good wine, and its 
people — the Kabyle, and the other tribesmen — forbidden 
the use of fermented liquor by Koranic precept, neverthe- 
less work in the gaiour vineyards. 

Behind this belt rise the uplands, of wooded expanses 
and green meadows, which bank the coast for some hun- 
dreds of miles. I had thought it to be a barren waste; 
but to drive by motor out of Algiers town in the late 
spring, to glide through the vineyards, to pass over the 
smooth French roads to these uplands, to pass through 
their forests, and among their meadows carpeted with 
wild flowers, is to write this tract down half a paradise. 

Descending on an evening to the coast, to the old 
fortified town of Bougie, I felt a deep balm come into 
the air, while' over land and sea lay the utmost peace. 
The road, these many miles back, had run under blos- 
soming trees. Flowery meadows had lain without the 
town, and here, within its gates, the hougainvillea grew 
massy against each white wall. Fading away in the 
dusk, this suffered a purple reincarnation under the full 
moon, and at midnight it glowed — the only living thing 
on the Algerian shore. And as for the sea ! Never had 
I seen the Mediterranean, never waters on earth, so sil- 
very, so ethereal as on this night. The peace that was 
past understanding rested upon Bougie, and I lay down 
to sleep in an ecstasy of joy. 

In the early morning I drove Eastward, between the 
vineyards and the sparkling sea; then turning inland, 
headed through the gloomy and fierce gorge of Chabat, 
and in the afternoon came out on the barren highlands. 
Here was the little walled town of Setif, an Arab town in 



6S THIS WORLD OF OURS 

the main, where a sheikh was that day dead, and the 
women stood hooded and howling in the street.* 

Farther on, upon the barren highland, that was once 
a belt of waving wheat, a Roman city stands in ruins. 
Entering by the great gate, and treading a paved cause- 
way, you passed the markets, the prison, the baths, the 
theatre, the palace of the governor and the dwellings of 
thousands of citizens. Mosaic floors, statuary, rich 
pilasters met the eye at every turn, and the French ex- 
cavators were unearthing new things each day. This 
Timgad seemed as big as Pompeii, and in finer preserva- 
tion; and spoke of imperial Rome in its zenith. 

Returning to the coast, travelling still Eastward, you 
cross the frontier of Tunis, and come to the Bay of 
Carthage. On the bay's high headland lies Sidi-bou- 
Said, a white Arab village, whither, more than once, I 
have ascended in the hot afternoon sun, to lie on green 
grass and look out upon the world. 

The bay beneath is very blue. It is a great semi-circle, 
and across from you, a white speck in the distance, is 
Korbous, a coast village of hot springs, in which the 
Arabs have lain for their rheumatism these two thou- 
sand years. Splendid mountains, rising inland, back the 
bay. From these, in days of antiquity, an aqueduct, on 
stone piers, brought in water to Carthage, and that fa- 
mous city lay on the seashore below you, no more than 
a mile distant. Nothing of it now stands; but digging 
below the surface, you will come upon cellars, and mosaic 
floors, and all the debris of the one-time city, and you may 
buy this ancient site by the hectare and excavate Carthage 
to your heart's content. Here, too, an exquisite wine is 
grown — a Muscat de Carthage. In its bouquet there 
seemed to blend the intellect of Hannibal with the beauty 

* "Sheikh maat»" cry the Arabs— "the chief is dead." Hence our 
••checkmate!" 



AFRICAN SCENES 69 

of Queen Dido; and in nature's ceaseless cycle, who 
knows but that in this wine I quaffed her tears ? 

On the site of Carthage stands the monastery of the 
Peres B lanes, and beside it a lonely and garish cathedral. 
It is a memorial to a great missionary, and a great man 
— to Cardinal Lavigerie — who lies buried here; but I 
like best his statue in Biskra, gazing out over the desert, 
gazing with kingly eyes to the south, even as Cecil 
Rhodes, in far away Bulawayo, gazes north. 

Ten miles away lies the city of Tunis, where the 
French have built themselves a fine town, yet have dis- 
possessed neither Arab nor Jew from the ancient city of 
his fathers. Old Tunis is a city of the East, flat-roofed 
and dead white, surrounded by gardens, a very pleasant 
place in Islam. 

A level road, which passes through vineyards, and 
olive groves, and fields of artichokes, and at last comes 
out on the waste of the hinterland, brings you in a hun- 
dred miles to Kairouan. 

This is a sacred desert town. It is so sacred, that 
seven visits to it carry a saving grace equal to the hadj\ 
and holy men throughout North Africa journey to it 
again and again. Here is a great mosque, whose many 
pillars come from the Roman temples which once dotted 
this land. It is a wonder in archaeology, a source of 
subtle flattery to Islam, yet not the greatest glory of 
Kairouan. That is a small, outlying mosque, a thing of 
tile and mosaic, where they treasure a hair of the 
Prophet's beard. Men call it the "Barber's" Mosque, 
because the great epileptic's barber, who was his friend, 
lies buried here. 

Once more we take to the waste, and after many miles 
there rises in the south an amphitheatre. It is El Djem, 
a very proper amphitheatre, fit to compare with the Coli- 
seum at Rome. It stcUids boldly out, a landmark for 



70 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

twenty miles; but the city which lay around it, and the 
wheat fields which fed its holiday crowds, have vanished. 

I now sail Eastward, and after some hundreds of miles 
sight the lighthouse of Alexandria, rising from a low- 
lying shore. Here is a busy harbour, a city of com- 
merce ; and while the Arabs do the manual work, the men 
in financial control are the Greeks. 

This delta of the Nile, this Egypt, is astonishing. No 
land quite so fertile, so closely irrigated, so responsive 
to watering, seems anywhere else to exist ; and the crops 
of cotton, of maize, of alfalfa, of beans — some of which 
they reap three and four times in the year — are a de- 
light to the eye. Here again are the Arabs. Only in- 
stead of in a white robe, they go here in a blue; but the 
facial types are the same; dark, haughty men, veiled 
women, donkey and camel trains, walloping urchins with 
their high-pitched objurgations, humble drawers of wood 
and water, beggars with their festering sores, are the 
stereotypes of all Islam. 

Cairo, greatest town in Africa, lies at the head of the 
delta. It is built of the white limestone of the Mokattam 
Hills, long, low-lying ridges, which break the line of the 
Eastern desert. Mounting to the citadel, one sees spread 
out beneath congeries of mosques with their minarets, 
insignia of a living religion; while beyond the river Nile 
stands pyramid after pyramid, monuments of Kingdoms 
and of Gods long dead. There stands the Sphinx ; here, 
the tombs of the Khali fs. That outlying block is the 
suburban palace of the Khedive. Beyond that, again, is 
Heliopolis, where ancients performed their sun-worship, 
and where modems — Belgian and Greek financiers— lay- 
ing out an elegant suburb, with a casino, sought unavail- 
ingly from the government a gambling license. 

The Government! In the last resort, who should that 



AFRICAN SCENES 71 

be but the British High Commissioner? And who, so 
long as water flows in the Suez Canal, and India is India, 
is it Hkely to be? One night, at the Khedivial Opera, 
they sang *'Aida." Verdi wrote it for this house, for 
the opening of the Canal. It was dirt cheap at four thou- 
sand pounds. Had Ismail, the spendthrift, received like 
value for all his outgoings, we had never had our fin- 
gers in the pie. But this was our Jewish premier's 
chance, and he took it. Ismail was bankrupt, and Disraeli 
dealt with him for his canal shares, securing the con- 
trol. It was a deal no less brilliant than Seward's, who 
had bought Alaska for the United States three years be- 
fore. In my time, I have seen the canal doubled in width 
and deepened, and I have seen Egypt, under great 
Cromer, flourish exceedingly. We have nothing to be 
ashamed of here. 

El Azhar, the chief mosque of Cairo, is given over to 
Sunnite theology, and some thousands of students sit 
about it on the ground, or outside in the courtyard. They 
give much heed to the learned elders who expound, and 
they sit droning, and memorising, and droning again 
through the livelong day. Some of these students are 
very old men; and in the hot, drowsy afternoons, when 
even the youths memorise with reluctance, I have seen 
them suddenly bend double over their book, and fall 
asleep. 

But on the birthday of the Prophet, a festival which 
changes with the calendar, what a to-do! There was 
no sleep then. On the outskirts of Cairo many immense 
tents were set up, gaudy within in red, blue and yellow, 
and embroidered Koranic texts; and all sorts of men, 
ranging themselves in long rows which faced each other, 
danced for hours in religious ecstasy. They danced to 
pipes and drums, or to their own rhythmic singing; they 
swayed to and fro; they stamped, calling to God and 



72 THIS WORLD OP OURS 

His Prophet; they burst into a sweat, their eyes glazedr 
their tongues lolled out, they saw the heavens open, and 
houris stretching out their plump and perfumed arms; 
one by one they fell reeling to the ground — and the 
places were taken on the instant by fresh and excited 
men. 

As I stand gazing from the citadel of Cairo, the shad- 
ows lengthen, and for an hour now, until the sun sinks, 
a deep glamour lies over the desert. It lies over all this 
land. Steaming down the Canal, or out in the Gulf of 
Suez you will see it, and it falls every evening upon the 
desert mountains which fringe the Red Sea. 

Above Cairo, that is to say to the south, Egypt, for 
all its great length, is no more than two miles wide — the 
Nile, between its ribbons of greenery, flowing through a 
waste of sand. 

At a spot more than a thousand miles south, beyond 
all the cataracts, Arab sailing dhows are drawn up by the 
river's bank, where are heaped piles of gum, for ship- 
ment, and a native town lies back of them. This is 
Omdurman, once the home of the Mahdi, then the place 
of his beheadal. Close by here the Nile branches — 
branches into "blue" water, and into muddy, which they 
call "white"; and but a mile or two along White Nile 
there stands Khartum. 

This is the Sudan, where Britain works with a free 
hand, and where she will bring all that can be brought 
to fruition. In the main, Sudan is desert, yet fertile over 
large areas ; there are dates and grain in the oases, while 
toward the Abyssinian highlands is a green country, with 
many cattle. The Greeks follow in our train here, snap- 
ping up the financial openings we make. Wholesale and 
retail, they are the merchants of Sudan. This land is too 
hot for our own people ; but I could wish that our Indian 



AFRICAN SCENES 73 

people might come here, rather than the Greeks, and 
grow prosperous in the days that are to come. 

Leaving North Africa, I now sail down the Red Sea, 
to the East Coast. Steaming out of the Red Sea, into 
the Indian Ocean, and hugging the African shore, I pres- 
ently enter a deep bay, and come to Djibouti. This is 
just a white town on a coral spit, set against the illimit- 
able and slowly rising desert. In the foreground stands 
the house of the French Governor, set about with palms 
and oleanders, behind it the white buildings of the ad- 
ministration. There are hotels, with cafes, kept by 
Greeks, where the white suited officials and merchants 
take their meals, but in the main Djibouti is a town of 
Somalis and Arabs. 

In the great heat of the day few move abroad; toward 
evening a breeze blows over the bay, the sun sets in ver- 
milion and gold, and a twilight enchantment falls on des- 
ert and sea. 

From Djibouti I set out for Harar, Southern Abys- 
sinia. 

Awaking at a dawn, I rose, and looked out upon the 
world. This garden, where my tent was pitched, lay at 
6000 feet, in the Abyssinian highlands, and the air was 
very fresh. English flowers were growing, and in a 
hedge of the compound wild roses were in bloom. About 
the house grew pepper trees. Doves and orioles flut- 
tered in their branches, where, delicately suspended, hung 
many nests. 

The house, with its trees, a landmark upon the hill- 
side, had belonged to Ras Makonnen, warrior and states- 
man, the nephew of Menelik. In a compound close by 
he now lay in his mausoleum. A circular building be- 
side it, garishly painted, that might have been the pump 



74 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

room of some provincial spa, was a church, where un- 
washed priests celebrated the rites of the Abyssinian 
faith. A mile away, in lower country, lay Harar, the 
old slave market, infamous once for a thousand miles 
around. That was in the Emirs' days ; and Burton, com- 
ing there in 1855, was the first European to enter it. 
Now the Arabs have been driven from the region; their 
power is ended; their mosques razed; and here Abys- 
sinians with their Christian churches are ruling the local 
tribes. But figs do not grow upon thistles, and I was to 
find that the brand of faith these people offered meant 
nothing at all. Five gates pierce Harar's crenelated walls. 
As in the Emirs' time, these are opened before the dawn, 
closed at dark, and are all day long centres of life and 
animation. Through the long lanes of euphorbia, wind- 
ing among the coffee gardens, or crossing grassy uplands 
more remote, thin streams of traffic converge upon the 
gates. Many laden donkeys arrive. Those bearing 
building stone and charcoal pass quickly in. Those that 
carry skins of mead, or other native liquor, are held up 
by a customs guard ; there is a muttered colloquy, a nod, 
the Abyssinian equivalent for a wink, and they too pass 
in. Some of the guard, their rifles laid aside, lie under 
a tree to smoke. Others cajole the market women who 
arrive, levying a toll; whether it be their khat-hnndles 
of a green leaf that stimulates — their chilis, or their 
ground nuts, a tithe seems always to pertain to the guard. 
A woman of quality journeys forth, heavily veiled. A 
servant leads her white mule, another shades her with 
an umbrella, and three follow behind. Troops of low- 
class women carry in skins of water, returning again and 
again to the 'neighbouring brook; slave women in all but 
name, the married ones have yet bunched their hair into 
plump chignons. Others wash beside this brook, setting 
their clothes to dry upon grass that has been a Mahome- 



AFRICAN SCENES 75 

dan graveyard. An Abyssinian notable approaches. He 
is heavily swathed in white cloth, and wears the wide- 
brimmed black felt hat. His feet are bare. His fine 
mule is caparisoned, and some nine riflemen or spearmen, 
stained with travel, walk in his train. As he reaches the 
gate, a dozen carriers of the city's refuse pass out. Beg- 
gars sit scratching their sores. Children and mangy pup- 
pies sprawl in the sun. Goats and cattle lie around. 
Nearby a man is skinning a dead camel, and a dozen dogs 
fight for the flesh. Vultures and kites hover above, 
swooping daringly at carrion, and there is, firs-t and last, 
a shocking stench. 

Harar is not a great town; and her bazaar is small. 
There is a fair regional trade passing in cattle and hides, 
in camels, in cotton, in millet and other grains, in rifles 
and ammunition, but it is not carried on und^r the pub- 
lic eye. The trade in cloth is in the hands of Banians — 
Bohra Mohamedans from Bombay. The liquor shops 
are kept by Greeks and Armenians. You will find here 
one product of excellence — coffee. Indigenous to this 
plateau, it is said to take its name from "Kafa," a dis- 
trict in the south. Possibly not inferior to "Mocha," 
grown in the Yemen of Arabia, it is often sold as such. 

The chief currency of Abyssinia has been the Maria 
Theresa thaler of the year 1780. Obsolete in Europe 
for a century, quantities continue to be minted in Vienna, 
for Abyssinian use. These come from the original die, 
but their silver content is now reduced by alloy. Their 
absorption throughout the country is steady; and just 
how many millions have been buried by men now dead, 
who will never tell their secret, would doubtless stagger 
us. The silversmiths of Harar use many thaler up; sit- 
ting crosslegged in their little shops, with anvil, forge and 
blow-pipe, eternally chewing leaves of the stimulating 
khat, they work coarsely, catering for the lower classes; 



76 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

but their silver mule trappings are for the rich. In their 
shops they burn an incense of a peculiar reek. I knew it 
at once; it is burned in the Abyssinian Church in 
Jerusalem. 

The centre of the town is an open square. In the 
daytime this is a crowded spot, where I have counted 
wellnigh a thousand men — Gallas, Abyssinians with rifle 
or spear, Somalis, Arabs, Banians, Jews and Armenians ; 
but the women do not venture here, or pass through 
quickly, with bowed heads. 

As I stood in this crowd, taking stock of mounted 
men who had arrived with their retainers, there was 
sudden tumult, and armed police came hustling a man 
through the square, a rabble at their heels. He was 
struggling fiercely, and they pulled taut a cord about his 
neck, so that he became livid. They were coal black, 
and he was white, and as they dragged him through the 
crowded square I could have sunk with shame to the 
ground. It is true he was only a Greek, taken in a 
brawl, who had drawn his knife on the police ; it is true 
the police were but doing their duty; but in the heart 
of Africa there should be no such scene as this. 

On one side the square justice was administered daily. 
Here stood a high Arab wall, pierced by a barbaric gate, 
and beyond it an open courtyard, where, marshalled by 
the guard, stood a throng of men — all white sheetings 
and black woolly heads. In the centre sat the contending 
parties, with their witnesses. Above them sat the minor 
judges, or assessors, sedate black men in silk gowns, 
and on a dais among cushions, under a galvanised roof, 
sat the Governor of Harar. Three wooden crosses, 
painted yellow, stood out from the roof; but that the 
truth was spoken in this courtyard, and justice dealt 
out to all alike, you must not for one moment believe. 

Christianity, even to the best of Abyssinians, is but 



AFRICAN SCENES 7T 

a Mumbo- jumbo — so much ritual, posturing, chanting 
and incense; its essence, which is of the brain, being en- 
tirely lost. Coming to them many centuries ago, through 
the Copts of Egypt, it found in the Abyssinians a bar- 
ren soil, and has changed them not one jot or tittle 
since. One would almost claim these people, tempera- 
mentally, for Islam, with a mental reservation on be- 
half of Jewry. The lion is their emblem — the *'Lion 
of the tribe of Judah." With Arab and Nubian blood 
in their veins, they are yet markedly Jewish, and their 
theology and writings bear many references to the *'lost 
tribes." They are warriors to a man; and were Eng- 
land or France to try conclusions, three or four hundred 
thousand would quickly take the field. Flushed by their 
earlier victories over Italy, they might at first offer a 
strong resistance, but no organised or protracted one. 
To me, they are just degenerate Basutos. There seemed 
but one enlightened man in the Abyssinian nation — the 
Emperor Menelik, warrior, statesman, and reformer, 
who now lay paralysed in his capital of Addis Abeba. 
At Harar they daily awaited the news of his death; 
nor was it certain that his empire, the only unannexed 
land in Africa, would long survive him. 

Farther down this East African Coast lies Mombassa, 
an old Arab town ; and from Mombassa I took the 
Uganda Railway, passing six hundred miles through 
British East Africa, to the shores of Victoria Nyanza. 
The train ran all one day through low-lying bush, a hot, 
deadly belt, toward evening passing through a region 
famous for lions, at night ascending slowly to the uplands. 
By nightfall I was greatly excited. Dawn would find us 
nearly at the Athi Plains, 5000 feet high, the greatest 
wild animal region in the world. 

I slept lightly, and was woken by the rushing of many 



78 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

feet. By my watch it was just half past two ; the night 
was dark and placid, the engine still panted up the long 
ascent. I had been dreaming. 

Again I awoke from a dream, and again; but before 
the dawn, phantom shapes, galloping among the trees, 
became real, and a troop of harte-heeste went by. At 
daylight, all unconcerned, a herd of zebras stood forty 
yards from the train, and in the wooded background 
many animals went stealing. When the train came to the 
open plains, animals were to be counted by the thousand. 
Zebras and harte-heeste galloped in troops of fifty, and 
the smaller antelopes covered the plains like sheep. In 
the foreground, now the sun was high, Thompson*s 
gazelles gambolled, and I could swear that some ostriches, 
half a mile away, were doing the same. No giraffe 
were seen that day, but in a dip of the plain trotted a 
rhinoceros. 

Just beyond the plain, hardly out of shot of the ani- 
mals, lay the town of Nairobi. It is located almost on 
the Equator, and lies 5000 feet high, in as well watered, 
wooded, and fertile a region as can be found in the 
tropics. 

Far to the South, in German territory, rose the white 
peak of Kilimanjaro. South of Nairobi, too, across a 
green, rolling country, lay villages of the Masai, the 
warrior tribe of these parts. In the early mornings, 
their women, hardy and tireless, came in with sheep or 
goats for market, or bore on their heads calabashes of 
native beer; and later in the day, gaudy in their new 
cloth, a little drunk on imported liquor, a little more 
tarnished with civilisation, stepping out in single file, 
they took the long trail home. 

A mile or two out was a forest, and in its depth a fairy- 
like glade. A stream of pure, cold water flowed here, 
birds sang in every tree, animals moved through the 



AFRICAN SCENES 79 

undergrowth, and the air was strangely fresh. Here I 
used to lie in the afternoons, and not alone. Villages 
stood beside the forest — ^villages of the Wakikuyu, a 
slave race to the Masai, but now, since the coming of 
the British, freed. Each afternoon these people sought 
the glade, where, the men in one circle, the women in 
another, they sat beside the running water, talking and 
laughing for hours, while the children, utterly joyous, 
rioted over the green grass. It is true that they were 
black people, that they wore but a loin cloth, and were 
numbered with the "benighted heathen" ; yet in this idyll 
of the African glade their happiness seemed to me divine. 

Beside Lake Victoria Nyanza, on this Eastern shore, 
the native tribe was the Kavirondo, a small-skulled, 
statuesque people, smearing their bodies with cocoanut 
oil, and going, both men and women, stark naked. Like 
other tribes living about the lake, they were at this time 
being mown down by sleeping sickness. A crew of young 
men, taking me in their canoe, rowed across an arm of 
the lake, to where stood a row of galvanised shanties. 
This was the hospital, in charge of a Goanese doctor, and 
here were some forty patients in the deadly grip of the 
sickness. They ranged from grown men, to a chubby 
boy of eight, newly brought in, and they were inevitably 
doomed. Those in the last stages lay comatose beneath 
a blanket. The flesh was gone from their bodies, a 
parchment of skin covered their bones. From the less 
advanced cases, now and again rose groans of anguish, 
but mostly there was silence. On the mud banks, not 
far away, crocodiles sunned themselves. For them, at 
least, this sickness round the great lake brought its 
compensations. 

Had I been a young curate, which, thank goodness! 
I was not, how would these sights have squared with 
my beliefs ? These forty dying men were a mere nothing; 



80 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

the estimate was that a million would die from the sick- 
ness. A million African babes born, suckled by their 
black mothers, grown to man's estate — for what ? At the 
appointed time, placed there by the same power, a mil- 
lion microbes awaited each one, with the absolute cer- 
tainty of doing him to death. 

But a week or two before, on the tropic shore of the 
Indian Ocean, I watched a colony of land crabs. Their 
holes were in the sand, where they sat, their eyes far 
out of their heads, awaiting a prey; and I saw that each 
had been given one normal, and one large and powerful 
claw. Presently a smallish crab ventured too far from 
its hole. Inside of five seconds, a larger crab was out 
and upon it, had broken its shell — its backbone, as it 
were — with a crunch, and had dragged the quiver- 
ing body into his hole. The small claw, I judged, could 
not have broken the shell; thus the reason for the large 
and powerful one was made clear. The sleeping microbe 
had only attacked man; the crab was fashioned to feed 
upon crabdom. 

Everywhere, more often than not in a setting of 
exquisite beauty, I saw murder; life feeding upon life; 
millions bom to become the food of millions more ; man 
himself, the vaunted heir of the ages, held of no more 
account than a feather. It was all so crazy-like ! So ut- 
terly unmeaning! You poor, fatuous clergy, with your 
"Ah! we must not question these things.*' If we must 
not question these things, why, in God's name, were we 
given our brains? 



CHAPTER VI 

THE PLAZA OF CARACAS 

Let me tell now of journeys in South America. 

I am sitting in the Pla^a of Caracas, in Venezuela — 
sitting and thinking. My thoughts are of this vast South 
America, of her soul, of her history; and I realise how 
little I — how little any of us — ^know about her. In our 
language men write and write ; there is making of books 
without end. Yet who, in our time, has written with 
true knowledge on four subjects I shall name: on the 
Spanish colonial days; the Revolution against Spain; 
the Dictators who have ruled in these republics ; and the 
Roman Church in South America — than all of which 
there is nothing more absorbing in history. 

At Seville, on Palm Sunday, 1493, a multitude stood 
beside the muddy and sluggish Guadalquivir, here just 
eighty yards wide; and presently, amid their shouts, 
Columbus came sailing up in his vessel, discoverer ol 
the New World. That contract, signed by Isabella 
and himself on the Granada plain, had borne a surprising 
fruit. 

The first land he had sighted was an island which he 
named San Salvador. It was probably that one we call 
Watling Island, one of the Bahamas, low-lying, some 
twelve miles by six in area, situate just north of the 
tropics. Columbus did not sight the mainland until 
the third of his four voyages to America. His dis- 
coveries lay among the isles of the Caribbean, and that 
island he loved best, and called his own, was Hispaniok, 

31 



82 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

or Haiti. Here he built his capital, naming it Santo 
Domingo, and here he ruled awhile as viceroy; a post 
held by his son after his death. 

Santo Domingo, first white settlement in the New 
World, thus became the forcing ground, the stepping- 
off place for nearly all the conquistador es. Velasquez, 
Conqueror of Cuba, sailed from here; Cortez, who, stay- 
ing a while in Cuba, passed on to the conquest of Mex- 
ico; Ponce de Leon, the discoverer of Florida; Balboa, 
an absconding debtor, hidden in a barrel, who made for 
Darien, and so to the first sighting of the Pacific; Fran- 
cisco Pizarro, to soldier along the Main, and then to 
discover Peru ; the christlike Las Casas, to labour among 
the Indians in Guatemala, and many more of lesser note. 
Not forgetting its founder, more famous men passed 
through Santo Domingo in those years than through 
any other spot in the world; and one must fix this little 
Haytian settlement in the mind as the true cradle of 
Latin America. 

At a daybreak once, I sailed into the forest-girt bay 
of Santo Domingo. On a bluff headland stood a stout 
old fortress, rounding which the vessel entered a river, 
and tied up at a wharf. The land rose up from the 
river; and upon this Western bank, though but a meagre 
area against the surrounding forest, lay the capital of 
Columbus — the oldest city In the New World. Here, 
were the crenelated walls, many feet thick. Passing 
through the gateway, there stood facing me the stone 
palace of the viceroys, now a ruin, while on the rising 
ground beyond appeared the towers of many old 
churches. 

Wandering in and out of these, and about the streets, 
now gaining a vista of the sea, and now of the illimitable 
forests I found among the people — who are half-castes 
of Indian and Spanish blood — a great commotion. 



THE PLAZA OF CARACAS 83 

Revolution had broken out, and this very day a hostile 
force marched on the city. On the higher ground, 
where the old walls had gone, men were stretching 
barbed wire, and throwing up barricades of sandbags, 
whilst many of the poor, from beyond this periphery of 
safety, were crowding with their belongings into the 
churches. Wandering on, I presently came to the plaza. 
Here stood the cathedral, flanked by fine old trees; it 
looked low and gloomy, half church, half Moorish fort, 
brown and wizened — the first cathedral in America. A 
statue rose before it in the plaza. Columbus stands on 
this; in seaman's garb, he gazes afar, rapturously, as 
upon a New World. To the pedestal clings an Indian 
Princess, a leathern girdle about her, long feathers in her 
hair; she looks upward, and traces in archaic lettering 
the name of Colon. The figure of the statue is that of 
a young* man, and the rapture on him young. Columbus 
when he sighted the West was middle-aged, weatherworn 
at that; but so charming is this grouping, so vivid the 
scene, I would not have had it otherwise. 

To the cathedral attaches a strange story. The coflin 
of Columbus was brought to Santo Domingo for burial. 
It had lain in Valladolid, where he died, and in Seville, 
and now was sent, in terms of his last Will and Testa- 
ment, to lie in his own capital; this being his fifth voyage 
to the West. And at the same time were sent the re- 
mains of his son, Don Diego, another viceroy of the 
island. 

The coffins — those of father and son — were placed 
in the Cathedral; they are known to have lain, each, in 
several vaults. After a long period of time, in which 
the coffins must have rotted, the bones, and their dust, 
were placed in caskets and deposited in two small cham- 
bers under the flags, no more than three steps from the 
high altar. 



M THIS WORLD OF OURS 

In the year 1794 Spain ceded Santo Domingo to 
France. But that the bones of Columbus, founder of 
Spain's Empire, should rest under an alien flag, was 
unthinkable, and they were removed to Havana. Here 
they lay for over a century; then were taken back to 
Spain, where they once again repose in the Cathedral of 
Seville. But they took the wrong bones. They had 
opened the chamber of Don Diego. Workmen, repair- 
ing the cathedral in 1877, came upon the other chamber. 
Here lay a leaden casket, with the initials of Columbus 
upon it, and his titles. This was opened in the presence 
of the Archbishops, the Canon of the Cathedral, and 
several foreign consuls, who, raising the lid, read upon 
its inside the words "The illustrious and noble gentle- 
man, Don Cristoval Colon." Among the bones and the 
dust lay a small silver plate, and again these credible 
witnesses read on it Columbus's name. 

A Commission now arrived, sent by the Spanish 
Academy ; the which, taking note of the bones that were 
Spain's, and of these new bones, that were not Spain's, 
but the property of the Dominican people, refused to 
credit them. Not so the Dominican people. Believing — 
and rightly believing, I think — the bones to be those of 
the great Colon, they took them from their chamber 
beside the high altar, and built for them, in the cathedral 
nave, a mausoleum of white marble. 

Having had its day, Santo Domingo passed into the 
twilight, and the centre of gravity shifted to the main- 
land — to the coast of Darien. That absconding debtor 
and adventurer, Vasco Nuiiez de Balboa, who escaped 
out of Santo Domingo to the Main in a barrel, so re- 
habilitated himself, that he became governor of Darien ; 
and in the year 15 13, at the head of an expedition, he 
set out to explore the interior. He was destined to make 
a great discovery. Standing one day on a low mountain 



THE PLAZA OF CARACAS 85 

range, and gazing westward, he saw beneath him a new 
ocean. 

"... with eagle eyes 

He star'd at the Pacific — and all his men 
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise — 
Silent, upon a peak in Darien." 

Keats mistakenly writes of Cortes; but the hero of 
the Pacific was this Nunez, who, descending to the shore, 
'^rushed in waist deep, with drawn sword, proclaiming 
the discovery his own, in the name of God and for the 
glory of Spain.*' 

A spot farther up the coast was chosen as site of the 
town of Panama; arid while Nuiiez remained here in 
local control, the superior government of Darien passed 
into the hands of one Pedriarias. But as time went by, 
the presence of so famous a man in this small community 
became gall and wormwood to the Governor's heart, 
who finally adjudged him contumacious, and placed him 
under arrest. Pedriarias' agent in this act was no other 
than Francisco Pizarro, who in later years was to dis- 
cover Peru. A charge of treason was preferred; and a 
few years after his great discovery, Nufiez de Balboa 
was beheaded. 

In course of time Panama became a city of 7,000 
houses, built beside the sea, round its splendid Cathedral 
of St. Anastasius, and the seat of the Spanish Viceroy- 
It was the gate to the South. From here Pizarro sailed. 
Here arrived, in later years, coming up from Arica and 
Lima, the wealth of Peru, the fabulous treasure of 
Potosi; and hence, oVi' a paved highway across the 
isthmus, convoys of slaves carried the silver bars to 
Puerto Bello, and so to Cartagena, for shipment to 
Spain. 

Panama was sacked by the buccaneer Morgan, who 
left it in ruins ; and while a new Panama was built, fiv« 



86 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

miles to the north, and flourishes to this day, the old 
city was blotted out by the forest. That is, all but 
blotted out. I saw the belfry tower of St. Anastasius 
still standing, covered by creepers, and in the crannied 
walls of the Viceroy's palace orchids bloom. Of smaller 
ruins there are a dozen or so, and where forest meets 
shore there is vestige of the old sea wall. In the swampy 
ground, overhung with mangroves, I saw the vermilion 
land crab steal. Along the forest track at my feet a 
green ribbon stretched, and seemed interminable. It 
moved! It was alive! Millions of ants were carrying 
pieces of the juicy water leaf from the pools to some 
chosen spot in the forest. Out of the forest, on this 
afternoon, came no sound. The Pacific lay dead calm. 
Over Old Panama, and along the coast, there was only 
silence. But as twilight fell, the Americans, quarrying 
in the distant canal, lighted their fuses, and the day went 
down to reverberations as of far-away thunder. 

At the other side of the world, on the West Coast 
of India, there flourished in this sixteenth century, Pana- 
ma's prototype — Goa, the outpost of Portugal. Founded 
some years earlier than Panama, reaching a greater 
population, a greater fame, Goa likewise suffered an 
early death, and was blotted from off the earth. I stood 
in Old Panama, and the forest was round me. I stood 
in Goa, and where the Palace of the Inquisition had 
been, there were cocoanut groves. Great Spaniards were 
seen in Panama — Balboa, the Pizarros, Almagro and 
Orellana; and there were great Portuguese in Goa. 
Vasco da Gama, Camoens and Albuquerque were there, 
and Xavier, who was to become a saint, lived there and 
died. His coflin, of wrought silver, rests in Goa, and 
because of his fame there are six churches among the 
cocoanut trees, and houses for the clergy ; but the Portu- 



THE PLAZA OF CARACAS 87 

guese city of the East, like the Spanish city of the West, 
is swept clean away. 

The Isthmus of Darlen, or Panama, is as densely af- 
forested as that other canalised Isthmus of Suez is stark 
desert. Recrossing it to the Atlantic side, and hugging 
the South American shore, you will come to the town of 
Cartagena, a jewel set beside the Caribbean Sea. So 
treacherous are the reefs here, that steamers seel^ a nar- 
row channel to the westward, and approach her across a 
placid and tropical lagoon. Seen from afar, this town 
of the lagoons is not unlike that other — ^Venice. Out 
of a dim white cluster, mediaeval and ecclesiastic, rise 
the domes of a cathedral, and the towers of many 
churches; like Venice, too, Cartagena rides as it were 
upon the water. 

Farther along this coast, where it is now Venezuela, 
you come to the port of La Guayra. Behind La Guayra 
mountains rise, range upon range, and the train to the 
interior passes up through the densest verdure of the 
tropics. Beyond the first range, in a valley, yet at above 
three thousand feet, Caracas is lying. This old Spanish 
town, to-day the capital of Venezuela, is surrounded by 
gardens, and in these gardens, or rising above the walls 
of the patios J you will see such hougmmnllea in bloom — 
mauve, purply carmine and brick red — as you have never 
seen. The gardens are what is best; but you will visit 
the Cathedral, at one side of the plaza, and the Executive 
Chamber at the other, with its pictures of the War of 
Independence, and of all the Dictators of Venezuela; 
and you will walk up above the town to the pantheon of 
Bolivar. 

I am still sitting and thinking in the plaza. What do 
I, for all my travels, know of the beginnings of this 
town? What do I know of this immense Venezuela? 



88 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

Sir Walter Raleigh knew more. He told Elizabeth that 
the fabled El Dorado^ for which men sought all over 
South America, lay here, and when James was king, 
sailed four hundred miles up the Orinoco to find it. 
Fever, mutiny, and the hostile Indians foiled him; he 
returned to England, suffered imprisonment, and was 
eventually beheaded. His death was thought to lie at 
the instance of the King of Spain, whose colony he had 
invaded; but I will swear that the envenomed James, 
into whose expectant arms he had poured no treasure of 
El Dorado, himself decreed it. 

Raleigh had been strangely on a right track. One 
hundred and fifty miles due south from that spot he 
reached on the Orinoco, there was a goldfield, and it is 
fair surmise he knew of this from the Indians. He 
never got there; but after the Indians had worked it 
many generations, the field was prospected by white 
men, and El Calloa, a "chimney" of quartz, was found, 
the richest gold mine in the history of South America. 
For years, during the '80s of last century, this mine pro- 
duced £80,000 a month, and enriched, among others, the 
dictator Guzman Blanco, who left his mark on Venezuela. 

The founding of Bogota, which to-day is the capital 
of Colombia, came out of the search for El Dorado. The 
site was located by the conquistador Quesada, in 1537, 
who had sought out this remote Andean plateau with 
that intention. Hot on his heels followed two other 
expeditions to the plateau. The one, coming from the 
northeast, was headed by the German, Federmann; the 
other was that of Belalcazar, the capturer of Quito; and 
these leaders, so strangely meeting, had each sought that 
fabulous spot which Indian rumour located on these up- 
lands. 

An El Dorado of sorts they actually found! In the 
mountains behind Bogota, at a two days' ride, lies the 



THE PLAZA OF CARACAS S9 

lake Guatavita. To the Indians of those, and of earher 

days, this was a sacred lake, the spot where kings were 

consecrated, where they first showed themselves to the 

people. All the people being assembled, the new king, 

together with the high priest, entered a boat; which put 

out on the lake. Presently the king was seen standing. 

Naked and glistening, he was covered in gold dust from 

head to foot, and the shout of ''The Golden One! The 

Golden One!" went up. [Or, if spoken in Spanish, *'E1 

Dorado!"] The high priest was seen to be propitiating 

the lake with gold ornaments, and emeralds, and the ^^ 

populace, in an ecstasy of emotion, threw its own paltry 

treasures into the waters. 

The tale of these strange rites was handed down, and 
pondered by not a few; until, in our own days, a com- 
pany was formed on the London Stock Exchange, and 
the lake, lending itself easily to a drainage tunnel, was 
emptied. On the bottom a great depth of mud was re- 
vealed, which, quickly solidifying, thwarted the work- 
ers. With its gradual removal, a few rare treasures 
came to light — idols, golden reHquaries, some fine 
emeralds — but it was at last borne on the seekers that 
the fabled wealth which ought to have lined Guatavita 
was not there. After all, why should it have been? Chief 
priests were cunning men before those days. String was 
cheap. A turn of the wrist, a few hours' immersion, 
and the royal treasures were restored to their guardians 
by sundown. 

Ouesada, the founder of Bogota, still searching for 
El Dorado, headed an expedition into the Amazonian 
forests when he was seventy. Ere he died, the city of 
the "Holy Faith" was a stronghold of the church, and 
destined to become, equally with Quito, the chief ec- 
clesiastical centre in South America. On the summits 
of Guadeloup and Monserrate, the steep and gloomy hills 



90 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

which lie behind Bogota, chapels were built — ^high cairns 
to Mother Church ; and the city itself, its many churches 
filled with holy pictures, with its powerful brotherhoods 
of the Franciscans, the Dominicans, the Jesuits, and their 
great monasteries, with its religious feasts, and its holy 
processions, was given over entirely to the Roman faith. 

The mainland of South America was annexed by 
Spain in the first half of the i6th Century. By the be- 
ginning of the 19th Century, that is to say in less than 
three hundred years, the half-caste race which had come 
into being, backed by not a few of the Spanish colonists, 
decided that Spain's rule must cease. 

The seeds of this revolution, which was to spread over 
the whole continent, were sown here in Caracas. Who 
knows but that they were sown in this plaza where I sit, 
and on just such a sunny afternoon? The first phase of 
Latin America centred round Santo Domingo; the sec- 
ond phase was to centre round this town on the main- 
land. 

On the 24th July, 1783, there was born in Caracas, in 
the then vice- royalty of New Granada, Simon Bolivar, 
scion of a noble Spanish family. As a young man he be- 
came a notable patriot; his money and influence being 
thrown on the scale in the life and death struggle then 
commencing against Spain. In course of time we find 
him a general, leader of the revolution in all New 
Granada. During a lull in the warfare, he visited Eng- 
land, raising there money and volunteers. He took back 
with him a number of officers and men, veterans of the 
Peninsular War, and Spain's final overthrow in South 
America was more due to these trained British soldiers 
than history has recorded. 

Bolivar was hardly a great general ; yet he won battles 
at Carabobo and Boyaca, freeing the immense provinces 



THE PLAZA OF CARACAS 91 

which became Venezuela and Colombia. And when his 
chief lieutenant, Sucre, an abler soldier, moving South, 
had won the more decisive field of Pichincha, giving 
nationality to Ecuador, and the last and greatest fight at 
Ayaciicho, that drove the Spanish Viceroy out of Peru, 
all the North of the continent, and that in Bolivar's 
name, was freed. 

Three years before Bolivar's birth, there was born in 
Argentina a greater than he. General San Martin,* 
at first an officer in the army in Spain, becoming one of 
the revolutionary leaders, freed Argentina and Chili by 
a series of military exploits rarely equalled. In the 
year 1822, his work well-nigh complete, he travelled to 
Guayaquil to meet the victor of the North; and because 
he was a great man, acclaimed Bolivar as Libertador, 
yielding to him the glory and prestige for all time. 

San Martin returned to Argentina, where he lived in 
poverty. Later, he went to England, and settled finally 
in Paris. A statue is raised to him at Boulogne, where 
he died. 

Bolivar, riding hard over great distances; over the 
terrible trails between Caracas, Bogota, Quito and Lima ; 
now placing himself at the head of the armies ; now sitting 
in the council chambers, continued his dazzling career of 
power. When Southern Peru was detached, forming a 
separate republic, his name — Bolivia — was given it, and 
for a month or two he assumed the presidency. Re- 
turning to Lima, he became for a time president of 
Peru, then, finally, president of Colombia, at the capital 
of Bogota. 

Quiet having settled on the land, the instability of the 
South American character was now seen. Bolivar, a 

* In pronouncing Spanish names note the accented syllable — thus : 
San Mar-teen, Bo-lee-var. Sucre is pronounced Su-cray; Flores, 
Flor-ez. 



9« THIS WORLD OF OURS 

man of prescience, knowing these people unfit to govera 
themselves, became autocratic. But he was tired out, 
and tiredness is no attribute of a dictator. The vice- 
president, Santander, was very able, and behind him 
there seethed a mass of intrigue. So at length Bolivar, 
hounded, disillusioned, laid down the sceptre, and left 
Bogota for ever. 

There is a small land-locked harbour on the Colombian 
coast, and built round it the old town of Santa Marta. 
On an evening, I drove three miles out of Santa Marta, 
to the lonely hacienda of San Pedro Alejandrino, 
whither the most famous man bom in South America 
retired, and where he very soon died. He was only 47, 
this Liberator. They said he died of phthisis, but if 
ever man died of a broken heart it was Bolivar. 

For all Colombia cared, he might have died alone. But 
he was not quite alone. His faithful French doctor stood 
by his bed, and an English officer, one of his British 
Legion, served him to the end. His body, interred at 
Santa Marta, was at last brought here to Caracas, his 
birthplace, where it lies in a pantheon. 

The man who died thus, discredited and disillusioned, 
has become the national hero. In the death chamber, 
and in the small chapel adjoining, I saw a hundred 
wreaths hanging, from the presidents and the peoples of 
all South America. In front of the hacienda' there is a 
Bolivar monument; there is one in Santa Marta, and in 
every pla^sa in Colombia. The great grandsons of the 
men who hounded him from office assemble yearly at 
the hacienda, and they sob and cheer as the rhetoricians 
recite his glories. The fame of Bolivar, in all this South, 
is become greater than the man ; but he was a patriot to 
the core, and could he but know the men who came after 
him, he would turn in his grave. 

Sucre and Flores, Bolivar's chief generals, and like 



THE PLAZA OF CARACAS 9S 

him Venezuelan-bom, played leading parts in the revolu- 
tion. At Pichincha, that volcano at whose base lies 
Quito, Sucre won a great victory. Passing south along 
the Andean plateau, and reaching the Peruvian highlands, 
he there dealt Spain the knock-out blow. When the 
country of Bolivia was formed, he took over the presi- 
dency of Bolivar, and the people renamed their capital 
of Chuquisaca after him. But they tired of him, as 
they would tire of the angel Gabriel, and Bolivia knew 
him no more. His wife, of the grandees of Spain, owned 
a great hacienda outside of Quito, and here Sucre settled 
down. 

Ecuador, now become a State, had perpetuated the 
victor of Pichincha on its silver dollar, still called a 
"sucre," and in the course of time was to set up his 
statue in every pla^a. But Flores was the first president 
of Ecuador, and Flores was jealous as could be. I will 
not say he caused Sucre's death ; but when Sucre, riding 
in a forest, was waylaid and assassinated, there was 
neither stir, nor hue and cry. The news was kept some 
time from the people, and his very burial place lost to 
knowledge. 

Not so many years ago, a woman of Quito demanded 
£500 of the Government, swearing she knew where the 
remains of Sucre lay. Upon provisional payment, she 
brought forward a very ancient man, her father, who 
long ago in Quito had seen the corpse carried secretly 
into a convent, and thence to a grave in the convent's 
chapel. And when they dug, there lay a man's bones, 
and Sucre's hat, and through hat and skull a bullet hole, 
even as the assassins had shot him. So the bones were 
dug up, and they lay in capella ardiente at President 
Alfaro's house for a week; being then taken in solemn 
procession to the cathedral. 

And so Spain passed from South America. The power 



94f THIS WORLD OF OURS 

which had been hers was now to be wielded, mostly for 
selfish and ignoble ends, by the dictators, and by a horde 
of unprincipled pohticians. But that other power, wielded 
by the Roman Church, and here built up to so astonish- 
ing a degree, was not to pass. On the whole, the 
Church in South America has held its sway over men's 
minds, whether they were Indian, mestizo, or pure- 
blooded Spaniards, and in spite of modernism, to the 
present day ; in some of these republics it is more strongly 
entrenched than anywhere in the world. 



CHAPTER VII 

PACIFIC COAST AND ANDEAN PLATEAU 

On a January day I sailed out of Liverpool. Heading 
for the south, we crossed the Bay, coming in due course 
to Corunna, where, in the wintriness of Northern Spain, 
roses still bloomed over Sir John Moore's grave. We 
dropped down the Portuguese coast, past Lisbon, past 
Gibraltar; with Europe far in our wake, we coaled at 
the barren island of St. Vincent, and seeing no land for a 
week, came to the Equator. At daybreak then, as I 
looked from my porthole, a mount of forest verdure rose 
from out the sea — Fernando Noronha, Brazil's convict 
prison, and the island out-post of South America. 

We steamed down the long Brazilian coast, and the 
coast of Uruguay, and the nights were again chill. We 
passed down the Argentine, into the waters of Patagonia; 
the winds were rising here, great seabirds skimmed the 
crested swell, and it was cold and bleak. At another 
daybreak, far, far in the south, we entered a bare firth, 
and steamed into a small inner loch. 

It was Scotland — some harbour in the Hebrides ! All 
around the loch stretched low-lying moors, with never a 
tree, and down beside the water stood a village of cut 
stone. At one end rose the manse, and upon the higher 
ground, by the side of the moor, were rows of shepherds' 
cottages. This land was not heathery, but one saw 
where the peat-beds lay; and the moors were dotted all 
about with sheep. Somewhere there was a flowering 
patch of gorse ; it was a grey, grey morning ; in the wind 

95 



96 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

which blew across the loch I heard the calling of 
whaups. 

"Well! what do you think of Port Stanley?" 

The second officer was speaking, and this wasn't 
Scotland at all, but the Falklands. This village of 8(X) 
people was the capital, and only town on the islands; 
the prim-looking manse was Government House. 

And it was a sheep country. I could see that before 
I landed. The sheep on their wind-swept moors, their 
shepherds, the few owners — there was the thing in a 
nutshell. ... 

I found I was right. This was a sheep country. Ex- 
cepting a diminutive fishing and whaling industry, es- 
tablished about the shores of the loch, the one business 
of these islands is their sheep. There is the wool, and 
there is the tallow — ^that is all; it does not even pay to 
fatten and freeze mutton. Fodder is scarce on the moor- 
land, and the wild geese at times play havoc with the 
young grass. Not another sheep could the Falklands 
carry. 

And hardly another man ! With 30CX) people and seven 
million sheep, these bleak islands — the most outlying in 
our empire — have reached a sort of economic finality. 

The colonists are of a marked Scotch strain. The land 
owners have travelled, but the lower orders, as I saw 
them in the village street, looked uncouth, almost slow- 
witted. Yet from such as these the Islands' Savings 
Bank had gathered £55,000. 

There is not a tree on these wind-swept islands. 
Gossip spoke of a tomato bush, three feet high, in the 
Governor's glasshouse, but this was not confirmed. On 
his front lawn, as I passed, the two convicts of the Falk- 
lands worked under the eye of an immensely fat warder. 
The three chatted pleasantly together. 



PACIFIC COAST AND ANDES 97 

These Falklands, lying remote from the South 
American coast, are seldom seen. I touched there only 
once; but that coast itself was to become well known to 
me. Especially was I drawn to Brazil, the land discov- 
ered by Vicente Pinzon. I recalled the discoloured wa- 
ters, far out at sea, which led conquistadores to the 
mouths of the Amazon, even as they indicated my ap- 
proach to Para, near where ocean and river meet. 
Equatorial, embowered in flowering trees, a town of 
white-suited officials and merchants, consumptive half- 
castes, and negroes, Para is depot for all the river, 3500 
miles long, and for its rubber, the staple of the Amazon 
watershed. In a public garden here was a collection of 
Amazonian fauna. Brilliant macaws — araraqtiaras in 
the Indian tongue — swung on their perches. Electric 
eels, gorged and lethargic, lay in a tank. These loath- 
some creatures, battening on flesh, inhabit the slimy 
swamps of the interior ; their prey may be a tired horse, 
some animal bogged in the mud, or even a man, whom 
they surround, and with repeated discharges finally 
stun. Gazelle and peccary were here in the garden, 
alligator and cayman, with many reptiles and snakes. 
In a wired enclosure a python lay coiled. Its bright eyes, 
ranging slowly round, rested ever and anon upon the 
other occupant — a fat duck, which at once pushed out 
upon the miniature lake. In the watches of that equato- 
rial night, in Nature's dreadful routine, the duck's soul 
was to be required of it ; when I went to the garden next 
day, the python lay alone in its enclosure, fast asleep. 

To the honour of Vicente, it was fitting I should sail 
on the Amazon; and along a waterway two miles wide, 
banked by low-lying forest, in great heat, I journeyed 
five days up-river to Manaos, a thousand miles from 
the sea. 

A vast river system radiates from tipper AmazoiL 



98 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

Each year, after the rains, the waters come down in 
spate, flood the low-lying, adjacent forests, and deposit 
a rich muddy sediment. Under such conditions wild 
rubber trees thrive peculiarly; arid when to these are 
added maturity of latex, and native methods of smoking 
and curing, the Amazonian product becomes the best in 
the market. This rubber supply is more or less limited 
to these flooded forests, and cannot be indefinitely ex- 
panded. Costs of production are heavy; but the world 
must have this fine product, and plantation rubber will 
not displace ''hard Para" in the meantime. 

Pernambuco, chief port of the sugar growing dis- 
tricts, and a great way south of Amazon, is a low-lying 
town behind a coral reef. Its crowded streets were 
strangely full of students — black-coated already, incipi- 
ent lawyers, physicians and journalists — who would drift 
easily into politics. 

Conceive this Brazilian race — ^half-castes of Portu- 
guese and Indian blood, intermixed with a negroid strain 
from the early African slaves: conceive them as ideal- 
istic, gentle, polite, quite clever, and deeply musical, but 
because of the strain that is in their blood unstable as 
water, all for outward show, parasites, talkers rather 
than doers, lacking in character. Brazil is too magnifi- 
cent a land for politics, yet the first flash of insight 
shows one there is hardly anything else. There are a 
federal, and twenty state governments, with a functionary 
at every turn. Brazil's development demands a race of 
supermen; yet fate handed her out these town-dwelling, 
office parasites, honeycombed with phthisis, who talk and 
talk, and play the piano charmingly, and despoil their 
states, and spin their web of the ideal. . . . 

To be on deck at daybreak, as your steamer passes 
the sugarloaf heads, and enters the bay of Rio de 
Janeiro, is worth an all-night vigil. To view Corcovado's 



PACIFIC COAST AND ANDES 99 

peak through palms and bamboos, from the botanical 
gardens, is an ecstasy; and, climbing this peak, or Ti- 
juca, to look down through green forests on city and bay 
far below, is one of the great moments of life. Rio de 
Janeiro, modernised, pretentious, made for outward show 
like all things Brazilian, is raised by her surroundings 
to glory; her site, among the world's cities, is beyond 
compare. 

Sailing across the wide bay, past wooded islands, I 
see before me, even as I saw from Corcovado, dense 
forests, and range upon mountain range. To-night I 
am headed to the lower hill-tops only; but these lie in 
forests so green and rich, in an air so cool, that I ask 
for nothing more. This is Petropolis, the summer cap- 
ital; and the ascent from the bay, by cogwheel track, 
has again disclosed verdure's last word. 

Rio de Janeiro lies barely in the tropics. On the up- 
lands, in its immediate hinterland, there is cattle raising, 
and some gold mining, but the best lands of Brazil are 
not yet. As you travel south these appear. A night in 
a train brings you to a wonderful city. This is San 
Paulo; high-lying, but not far inland, the creation of 
Italians, Germans, British and Portuguese, and set pic- 
turesquely upon hills. Capital of a state, it is the city of 
coffee, centre of the world's greatest coffee area, built 
by coffee, sustained by coffee, growing fast through coffee 
— and a mediocre coffee at that. 

Far in the interior, squeezed in behind Southern 
Brazil, is the republic of Paraguay. I had sailed a 
thousand miles up the Amazon, but from Montevideo to 
the little capital of Asuncion, on the river Parana, was 
even further. This, too, was a grazing land, wooded, 
in a fine climate, recovering slowly from the wars of 
Lopez, when the men of Paraguay, fighting in turn 



100 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentine, were well-nigh wiped 
out. 

Land was cheap in Paraguay. They offered me a 
square league of the best for eight hundred pounds. 
And it was good value; for the Argentine railroads, 
heading north, would enhance it every year. A product 
of this remote little land is millions of oranges. On the 
river steamer, returning, the roof deck was loaded three 
feet deep with this fruit, for the markets of the River 
Plate. 

All the Argentine, I found, was focussed on Buenos 
Ayres. Lying on the south bank of the Plate, this was 
a growing seaport, vastly wealthy, with over a million 
people. The Latin races, Greeks, Syrians — all the peo- 
ples of Southern Europe — were crowding in; the city's 
census already showed three hundred thousand Italians. 

Beyond the city there was a treeless plain. But it was 
a plain six hundred miles wide, nearly two thousand 
miles long; it reached from Patagonia to the semi- 
tropical chctco, and grew fine crops or fed immense herds 
from end to end. This was one of the world's food 
belts, perhaps the greatest, and destined for a wonderful 
future. A network of railroads radiated from Buenos 
Ayres. They belonged to the British. Just a century 
ago the whole country might have been theirs; until a 
certain General Whitelocke, with three thousand men, 
was attacked in the capital by the dagoes, and put to 
rout. 

The land now was mostly in the hands of the native- 
bom. Its value near the capital was very great, de- 
creasing as it neared the confines; and values continued 
to grow, making more and more men wealthy. Hence 
these shiploads of swarthy millionaires, sailing for 
Paris; these many Argentino owners, horse-racing at 
Belgrano for big stakes ; these two opera houses, crowded 



PACIFIC COAST AND ANDES 101 

nightly; and these hundreds of ladies plastered with 
jewels, driving down the "Avenue of May." 

Sailing south from Argentina, ploughing a heavy sea, 
my steamer entered the Straits of Magellan. Here I 
landed at Punta Arenas, Patagonia, the most southerly 
town in the world. A whahng industry is located here, 
and two mutton- freezing works; across the Straits, on 
the plains of Tierra del Fuego, an Anglo-Chilian com- 
pany owns a million sheep. Sheep are opening these 
territories to the world. Argentinos, Chilenos, New Zea- 
landers, Welshmen are making money to-day in Pata- 
gonia, and civilisation is creeping in. Westerly, the straits 
rise up on either hand, and I viewed the high peak of 
Sarmiento, white in the moonlight. A heavy swell again 
set us rocking and amid fog and rain we came out on the 
South Pacific. This was Southern Chile — all mountain 
and forest, and cold, drenching rain — and being a treach- 
erous, unlighted coast, we stood far out to sea. For 
hundreds of miles northward, along this bleak coast, 
there is little settlement. But where the climate begins 
to relax, and the mountains have somewhat receded, a 
scattered population is penetrating. Farther north, again, 
the flourishing German colony of Valdivia is passed, the 
coal mines of Arauco and Lota, and we sail into the fine 
harbour of Talcahuano, where the Chilian Navy rides 
at anchor. 

We are now come to Central Chile, a temperate clime, 
a land of mountain and valley, of big trees, of green 
grass and running water. The Spanish tongue only is 
heard, and here, half an hour inland, we arrive at the 
pleasant town of Concepcion. 

From Concepcion the State railway runs through the 
main valley of Central Chile. This land, plenteously ir- 
rigated, is highly fertile. The farmhouses, red-tiled, lie 



102 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

in their trees ; maize, wheat, potatoes, pumpkins, tobacco, 
grow in profusion, and herds of plump stock or horses 
cover the pasture land. Further north there are the 
vineyards, producing good wine, and the great fruit 
orchards ; by wayside stations, for shipment to the capital, 
lay water-melons by the hundred thousand. 

Santiago, capital of Chile, is a city on a plain. It 
lies at many leagues from the mountains; but on fine 
days, looking eastward, you will see them, white-capped 
and very clear. The city must have a population of four 
hundred thousand. There are several fine streets, the 
Alameda with its old trees, and the quarter of the well- 
to-do; but the masses are seen to be poverty-stricken, 
their dwellings wretched. 

Reach down an Atlas, if you would understand the 
poverty of the Chilians. Their country, over two thou- 
sands miles in length, is a mere ribbon along the Pacific, 
and one half but barren mountains. The South we saw 
to be mountainous forest; the North, for hundreds of 
leagues, is sheer mountainous desert. There remains 
this Centre, well watered, fertile — ^yet an area of just 
so many square miles, of just so many landowners in 
possession, and of a thriftless, owningless, proletariat, 
breeding fast. It is the problem of Europe over again. 

A train journey of four hours brings you to Val- 
paraiso. A slight bay marks this busy seaport, in 
whose open roadstead considerable shipping always 
rides. Rough weather is the exception in Valparaiso 
Bay; and if you anchor far out, you will see on a fine 
day Aconcagua, highest point in all America. So 
abruptly do steep hills rise behind the bay, that Val- 
paraiso, lying between the hills and the shore, is a city 
of length without breadth. The town overflowing, 
houses have clustered on the lower slopes of this amphi- 



PACIFIC COAST AND ANDES 103 

theatre; yet the vista of this most British of the South 
American ports is grimy and utiHtarian. 

At two days* steaming north of Valparaiso, we enter 
into a new world — into a new setting of the primeval 
elements, sea and land. This is a region : 

"Where falls not rain, or hail, or any snow. 
Nor ever wind blows loudly ..." 

This is the desert of Northern Chile, brown and utterly 
barren, rising ever up to the Andes. The very sea, be- 
come lustreless as the dry land, has sunk to a slow, 
grey swell. 

It has not rained along this coast in the memory of 
man. There has not fallen an inch of rain in fifty — 
not in a hundred years. It probably has not rained 
heavily here since Almagro and Valdivia surveyed this 
land, not since the Inca first became its overlord, and 
who shall say for how many aeons before that? Rain 
clouds form in the interior, only to precipitate upon the 
high Andes, and to float out dry and sterile over the 
western sky. 

Yet a rainless land hath its pearls ! Copper carbonates 
are exposed in all these mountains; borax lakes and 
nitrate layers lie upon the immense uplands. 

I am aboard a coastal steamer now. We lie anchored 
off a small town — an abortion of adobe, whitewash, and 
galvanised roofing. There is no harbour — there are no 
harbours along this coast — and we rock slowly on the 
long swell. Beside fore and aft hatches the steam 
winches are working ; as the swell rises to the vessel, they 
rattle furiously, and amid a shouting of the stevedores, 
crates, casks and ironware from Europe are dumped 
heavily into the lighters. We are taking on board ore in 
sacks, and copper ingots ; noting which, I range my eyes 



104 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

over the rising desert and see where a railroad winds 
down from a mining field in the Andes. It is midday 
now. The winches are silent. The hard-worked men in 
the lighters make a hearty meal. Seaward it is calm 
and grey, and I count nigh on a hundred great birds 
flying low to the northward. 

But I would not live in this land. . . . 

Now we have passed Antofagasta, and are steaming 
for Iquique. We verge on the tropics. The Humboldt 
current, flowing up from the Antarctic, keeps the air 
strangely cool. But the land, more than ever barren, 
has now, in the rarer atmosphere, assumed the utmost 
grandeur. Endless mountains are visible, chain above 
chain. The panorama, starkly bare, ranges over thirty 
leagues — a, vast chiaroscuro : wherein the nearby colours, 
brick-red and lake, recede to brown, to violet, to the 
faintest blue, and to a mere phantom outline that is the 
eternal snow. 

As we steam along, the general contour is broken by 
ranges rising precipitously from the water's edge. One 
such, a thousand feet high, lies abeam at this moment. 
A tiny settlement clusters at its base; and at a stone's 
throw, twelve full-rigged ships, hardly visible against 
the beetling cliffs, ride at anchor. 

This is the nitrate country, that Chile wrested from 
Bolivia and Peru a generation ago. These ships are 
loading for Europe. They have mostly come over from 
Australia, with coal, and there are eighty in the nitrate 
ports to-day. Along these uplands, for some hundreds 
of miles, extraction of saltpetre from the desert sands 
is a big industry. And a rich one. Chile, drawing in- 
creasing millions from the nitrate export tax, sets her- 
self to grandiose squanderings; while in the council 
chambers of Lima the dispossessed Peruvians mutter 
ominously. 



PACIFIC COAST AND ANDES 105 

Out seaward, along this coast, great birds are flying 
by the thousand. For the last two days all have flown 
north, with an air of purpose and of mystery. 

Verdure does not creep back into this land until far 
up the coast of Peru. A spasmodic verdure at that: 
not of rain, (this is a rainless coast for many a league 
yet) but of irrigation from Andean streams — green val- 
leys among barren strands. Here is the port of Callao, 
with its sheltered roadstead, an ugly entrance into Peru ; 
at three leagues inland, across the rising plain, there 
are seen the church towers of Lima. 

The *'City of the Kings,'* so long the seat of the 
Spanish viceroys, is set well out from the mountains. 
The bawling Rimac cuts it apart, whose waters have 
made all the nearby lands fertile, and have raised about 
the outskirts these avenues of old trees. 

On this day of which I write, there was trouble in the 
city. The government, not getting its way in a matter, 
was at odds with the populace. Cavalry patrolled the 
streets, and a number of men were shot down. On the 
pl^iza, the centre of the town, it was still as death, and 
looking up, I saw that army riflemen had been placed 
on the flat roof of the cathedral, between the two domes. 
In the stillness, as they stood on the parapet against the 
sky, I saw again the twelve apostles on St. John 
Lateran. 

Crossing to the cathedral, and ascending the broad 
steps, I entered. Unmindful of all political strife, of 
the worldly hopes and fears of men without, the Roman 
Church was going unwearied on her way. A service was 
taking place. The clergy, fully robed, sat in their stalls, 
the organ swelled, and the voices of the choristers, men 
and boys, rose in a Gregorian chant. 

There were but two worshippers in that great church, 
two veiled, kneeling figures, and outside was strife. Yet 



106 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

never, I think — not for great papal legates in scarlet, 
not for viceroys in their cloth of gold — never did in- 
tonings more rich and sweet vibrate along those aisles. 

Two, did I say? There w^as a third — and he in direst 
need. In his glass coffin, all shrunken, lay Pizarro; so 
foul an Inca's murder rests on his soul, that a thousand 
masses will not wash it clean. 

Close behind Lima rises the solitary hill of San Cris- 
tobal, on whose summit, a beacon for all the city, an iron 
cross, ten metres high, has stood these many years. 
Science, in the shape of German electricians, came in the 
last months, and placed upon San Cristobal an erection 
of one hundred metres — strangely cruciform, a very 
beacon indeed! This is the station for the new teleg- 
raphy, one of the finest in the world, carrying over the 
Andes to the far interior; by which, for the sum of five 
pence a word, you may reach Iquitos on the Amazon, 
a thousand miles away. 

Mark well these crosses, placed in so strange conjunc- 
tion on San Cristobal's summit ! As s}Tnbols, they stand 
for much that lies in men's minds. They stand (shall 
we crystallise it?) for a virgin birth, against a wireless 
message — for the old supernatural against the new. To 
an ancient Syrian the first of these was believable; the 
second not at all. x\nd to a thinking European of these 
days . . . who shall say? 

The long coaist of Peru, north of Callao, is a coast of 
shabby Httle ports, and much barrenness; yet likewise 
of oases, where cotton and rice are grown, and the 
finest sugar. Many Chinese were once brought to these 
sugar fields, who, their indentures ended, remained in 
the country, married Peruvian or Indian women, and 
produced a half-caste in whom each parent is clearly 
marked. Of this new brand in pedigrees — "From China 



PACIFIC COAST AND ANDES 107 

to Peru" — there may now exist forty thousand. The 
men seemed to me altogether inferior; the maidens, 
stepping demure in the mantillas of their mother's race, 
often physically fine. 

Where the coast was sterile, one yet saw at times a 
fertile hinterland, or occasional small town lying in the 
interior among trees. Such a town is Truxillo, founded 
very early by Pizarro, set upon an upland at several 
miles from the sea. From the sea, Truxillo is a cluster 
of white Spanish churches; it merges seemingly into 
cane fields and a green valley coming out of the moun- 
tains. 

Watching this so romantic spot through glasses, I 
have seen a goodly company making for Truxillo of a 
morning — setting out from the port, from adjacent irri- 
gated farms, or crossing the nearby desert country. 
There would be a waggon or two, a train of laden mules, 
a cavalcade of cahalleros in ponchos, wide hats, and 
fantastic saddlery; and a nondescript traffic of peones, 
of mounted priests, of women riding donkeys, and of 
graziers taking in cattle. 

As I watched, 

"Sometimes a trck)p of damsels glad, 

An abbot on an ambling pad, 
Sometimes a curly shepherd lad,'* 

rode across the field of vision, and it was my quaint con- 
ceit that morning to imagine that Truxillo had become 
Camelot. 

Yesterday we passed the guano islands, white with the 
droppings of countless birds. To-day we lay off a port 
loading sugar, and to seaward, for nearly the whole day 
long, birds flew past. They went always North. Hour 
after hour, fiying very low, they came up in unending 
phalanx, in lines two hundred strong. There were gulls, 



108 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

quick flights of divers and black ducks — as it might be 
a skirmishing cavalry — but the great body of that host 
were large grey pelicans, sweeping forward, making for 
the far horizon with utmost deliberation. By moderate 
count, several million great birds swept past that day; 
and I imagined that the last great auk was dead, down 
in Patagonia, and (that these unnumbered squadrons 
bore it to a grave in the deep, equatorial sea. 

It is certain that instinct guided them. Somewhere to 
the north a food supply had been signalled. Somewhere, 
sick with fear — between these highly adapted, cruel 
pelicans* beaks in the shallows, and the lightning darts 
of marine monsters farther out: between the devil and 
the deep sea — a hundred million little fishes awaited their 
destiny. Somewhere, very soon, the calm waters of the 
Pacific would come all a-sparkle, and a myriad of silvery, 
little lives would go suddenly out.* 

Now we are lying off Payta, the last town on this 
long, long barren coast. For the last time, through a 
weary day, we roll to and fro; for the last time the 
winches rattle, and the lighters rise up to meet their 
loads. Northward, the desert still stretches out ; but this 
is near to the equator, and nature is about to burst 
through in a flood of vegetation. The Humboldt current, 
with its cool air has gone, and a great heat lies over the 
sea. A few leagues more, and we are opposite Mount 
Chimborazo and the forests of Ecuador. 

When I first sailed along this Pacific Coast, or lay 
idly before the ports, my eyes strayed to the high Andes, 
my thoughts to the countries lying beyond their peaks. 

There is a vast plateau up there. Beginning in the 
South of Bolivia, extending through Peru, into Ecuador, 

*On the next day, I saw millions of pelicans diving, and cominj[ 
up with fish in their beaks. The wriggling of the fish in the sun, 
OTCr several square miles, set the sea sparkling like silver. 



PACIFIC COAST AND ANDES 109 

it is certainly fifteen hundred miles long ; thinning out at 
times to no material width, yet attaining in places a 
breadth of a hundred miles, two hundred, or even more. 
You must not think of this plateau as a great plain. 
Plains there certainly are, which you shall not cross in 
four days' riding; but I would have you imagine an 
immensely elevated region, rolling, yet much broken, 
a Cyclopean breathing ground, whence the great peaks, 
invigorated to a final effort, shot up into a region of 
eternal snow. 

The plateau averages not less than twelve thousand 
feet high. In Bolivia it is thirteen thousand, in Peru 
hardly less; only in Ecuador, beginning to tail away, 
does it fall to below ten thousand feet. Of the five 
railroads which wind up to it from the coast, four have 
carried me thither ; and I have ridden horseback up there 
for hundreds of leagues. 

The plateau, in the tropics though it be, is a wind- 
swept, treeless region. The days are mostly bright and 
sunny; the nights often misty, and bitterly cold. In 
the south there is frequent snow, and one is rarely out 
of sight of snow peaks. The air is very thin ; I have lived 
up there for months, and stood it well, but a weak heart 
would quickly collapse. 

The plateau has played its part in history. The Incas 
were plateau men ; the dwellers in the low countries be- 
came their tributaries. Cuzco, their capital, lay at eleven 
thousand feet. Their great shrine of Tiahuanuco, whose 
monoliths still stand, and the temple of the Sun on Lake 
Titicaca, were higher still. Potosi, the mountain of 
silver, whose riches set Spain at the head of Christen- 
dom, lies up here. In the war of the revolution there 
were fierce battles upon the plateau. From far distant 
Pichincha, Sucre came hastening, who routed the 
Spaniards at Junin, a field thirteen thousand feet high, 



110 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

and at Ayacucho, farther to the south, inflicted the coup 
de grace. 

At big distances apart, there are towns. La Paz lies 
here, in a deep ravine, and Quito, at nine thousand feet, 
is an outpost at the northern end. But the mestizo popu- 
lation is small, and outside of the mining camps are few 
Europeans. 

Of the Indians — Quichuas and Aymaras — there are 
some millions on the plateau ; their villages, mere sordid 
groups of hovels, radiate discomfort and ooze filth. They 
dwell, too, about the outskirts of the town, and must be 
accounted, hygienically, the vilest citizens of the New 
World. They can become skilful miners, fair mechanics ; 
but as agriculturists have had little chance. They gather 
a potato crop from the poor soil, but in the south their 
wretched patches of barley do not even ripen. They 
graze sheep for flesh, and raise the guanuco and the 
alpaca for their wool. For fuel, they use llama dung, 
or the sponge-like yareta root; there is blinding smoke 
for the eyes in their hovels, but no warmth. As carriers, 
their llamas are seen everywhere on the plateau. I seem 
to remember the men always marching ahead, while the 
women, winding on their spools, follow the animals. 
Both sexes, except at the festivals, go in home-woven 
garments of wool, with bare feet. The men, especially 
in the north, affect a Panama of coarse make, which 
gives to them, when they roll in liquor, quite a jauntmess ; 
the finest of these hats are made at Manabi, on the 
Ecuador coast, and seldom reach the highlands. 

As cooks, they have a glimmering. From the Span- 
iards they learned to prepare a savoury vegetable soup, 
but garlic and other horrible herbs make their meat un- 
eatable. At Poopo, in Bolivia, a group of Indian women 
sit at the station selling bread, and when the train stops^ 
well-nourished white men jump out and begin to eat it 



PACIFIC COAST AND ANDES 111 

This is surely the best bread I have tasted. The secret 
I do not know; but I have seen the wild ducks on Lake 
Poopo, and have been told the women mix the white of 
duck eggs insidiously in the dough. 

The outstanding trait is their filth. They are bom in 
filth, and in it they die. They wash rarely, if ever, and 
their bodies become hosts for vermin. As I stood before 
the Cathedral of Quito, on a Saint's day, two Indian 
women sat on the steps; oblivious of the crowd that 
came and went, they searched each other's heads minutely 
for lice. 

These plateau Indians are mild and easily handled. 
They are a peaceful and long-suffering race; it is only 
when crossed with Spanish blood they become cruel. 
They are a race of drunkards, both men and women 
being given up at times to terrible debauch; but it is 
the debauch of the mild, not of the vicious. A highly 
emotional, deeply superstitious race, the ritual of the 
Roman Church was destined to capture them. Not at 
first. The Church signalised her entrance to the Andes 
by palliation of the Inca's death at the hands of Pizarro; 
installing, then, the Holy Office, she reigned for many 
years by torture, by the flaying of this people's very soul. 

Methods of salvation more suave at last began to 
prevail, and the Indians, broken and adaptable, were 
reached through their emotions. The music, the incense, 
the genuflexions, the processions on Saints' days, and all 
the assiduous arts of the Church, won them at last ir- 
revocably to Rome. 

Night in the small Indian towns of the plateau — in 
such towns as Potosi, Challapata, Jimin, Cerro de Pasco, 
or Riobamba — is strange and mysterious. Soon after 
nightfall it has become intensely dark. Heavy clouds 
flit by, it is bitterly cold, and there is expectation of 
thick mist before morning. The Indians who steal past 



11^ THIS WORLD OF OURS 

are seen to be shrouded in their ponchos, and no women 
are abroad. Once, coming out of the mist, I saw a be- 
lated herd of llamas pass. For a moment, a wizened 
camel-face was thrust in mine, then, with shuffling, and 
with little coughs, they were gone. In the remoter 
streets the houses, opening on their patioSj present long, 
bare walls. Here in the darkness, for an infinite time, 
there will be no sound, but of a sudden there will come 
a knock, the bark of a dog, a voice at a grating, then 
a door will open, and close, and the night sink again to 
stillness. A dim light is burning, shaded over. It is a 
candle before a stone crucifix. In the shadows behind, 
steps lead up to an old church, to a door all clamped with 
steel. A figure looms, and the night watchman goes 
past; he blows a low melancholy whistle, and over a 
vast distance there comes another. 

This is the roof of the world, and the mystery of its 
night is upon you. I have passed through other eerie 
nights, yet they were not as this. Things here are not 
>vhat they seem. . . . 

Now I have grasped it! These Indians, these half- 
castes — do you think they have forgotten? Their Inca, 
the King Atahualpa, went first. That long and awful 
roll followed. Those shrieks of agony 1 Ovens heated 
to redness ! Instruments of iron that crushed the bones ! 
Do you think they have forgotten? This fearfulness, 
this deep stillness, these shrouded figures stealing by — 
they are remembering! It is a dread expectancy, a still- 
ness of fear: as if, on the tolling of a bell at midnight, 
the doors of churches should open in a blaze of light — 
open on the Inquisition, in its robes and masks, 
sitting as it sat three hundred years ago, with the 
Inquisitor, the assessors, the suborned witnesses, the tor- 
tures, and all the paraphernalia of horror and of death. 



CHAPTER VIII 



ECUADOR AND COLOMBIA 



The wooded island of Puna lies athwart the broad 
mouth of Guayas River. At a spot over against the main- 
land, in a clearing, Ecuador's flag floats over some 
shanties ; and when the steamer's syren has reverberated 
through the forests, a richly dressed official puts off in 
a rowing boat. This is the quarantine station. Tropical 
forests line the river's banks; as you ascend, these open 
out into parklike expanses, w'here cattle graze, and 
cocoa, maize, and fruit grow in the native clearings. 
And presently, upon the north bank, there is the town of 
Guayaquil — sl town of painted wood. South Italian to the 
eye, with some show of river craft, and animated water 
front. 

Beyond the town lie low, wooded hills. From their 
summit, in the cool of the day, I gazed over these green 
lowlands of Ecuador, over the distant swamps, and the 
forests, and the river, winding silvery in the setting sun. 
At nightfall, on the in-tide, Indians, who had traded 
that day in the town, put out in their canoes, making for 
their distant villages. I watched them paddling with a 
slow and measured rhythm, heading for the interior ; and 
even as I watched they became grey, and were absorbed 
into the vastness of the night. 

The Guayas is a tidal river, and when the tide goes 
out, Quayaquil's secret is laid bare. For a mile along 
the water front, dumped there by generations of her 
people, lies the filth of a century, added to daily by 
the sewers, and by all the garbage and offal of the town. 

"3 



114 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

As the hot sun strikes down, nameless smells, thick as 
syrup, rise from the slime, and mingle with the buzz 
of countless flies ; while dogs are nosing, rats feed openly, 
and a myriad small land crabs suck in their gruesome 
sustenance, or struggle fiercely together. On this ooze, 
at low tide, Indian canoes rest, laden with cocoa beans 
or piled with luscious fruits ; their owners lie in them fast 
asleep. The secret of Guayaquil is yellow fever. In 
the rains the stegomyia mosquito breeds, hovers awhile 
over the cloaca by thie river, then strikes. "Lord, is it 
I?" cry the strangers within the gates, for many of them 
will now sicken and die ; and ere they die they rot. 

In the last rains, ending but a few weeks ago, there 
was a revolution here. The president of Ecuador died 
of a heart trouble, and one Montero, general in com- 
mand of Guayaquil, proclaimed himself. He lasted just 
a month. The Government at Quito sent its troops down, 
who fought four battles; but before they were ended, 
those men from the plateau, and these lowlanders they 
fought, were dying like flies. The Ecuadorians are 
fighters; but this time they admitted to a bellyful. Men 
fought to their waists in the swamps, where malaria 
awaited them — and the snakes ; they died of yellow fever 
on the troop trains, and were thrown from the windows ; 
a thousand were killed in one battle, and the wounded, 
crawling with maggots, lay helpless over the steaming 
land. Montero, taken at last, lay in Guayaquil prison. 
Anticipating any verdict of court-martial, a rabble broke 
in, cut his throat, beat in his brains, and dragged a 
naked and swollen corpse to the steps of the cathedral. 
For safer custody, five other rebel leaders were sent to 
Quito, where, on a February afternoon in this year of 
grace, 191 2, they suffered a like fate, with the added 
contumely of burning. 

Pondering these horrors as I walked, I came to the 



ECUADOR AND COLOMBIA 115 

cemetery of Guayaquil, lying beyond the outskirts of the 
town, at the base of those low, wooded hills. It was 
early afternoon; the sun shone hot, and being drowsy 
I curled myself on a seat. In this cemetery, the coffins 
of the rich are cemented into raised niches, and the 
graves of the poor lie scattered over the slopes beyond, 
where the primeval *'bush" still grows. 

From contemplation of a site so unusual, my eye 
rested on the cemetery fence, and passed to a house that 
stood by itself at a short distance beyond — a galvanised 
iron house of one storey, painted grey, that had no 
windows, but an open grating just under the roof. As 
I noted these things, four well-dressed men, of the pro- 
fessional type, came out of the house and walked away 
towards Guayaquil, and I dropped asleep on my seat. 

I may have slept twenty minutes. My waking eyes 
rested on the bushy slopes, where a tree had blossomed 
in masses of pink, and I gave my casting vote for the 
poor people's graves. Some peons had worked near me, 
but they were gone now, and I realised that all the work- 
ers in the cemetery had disappeared. And then I saw 
them crowded together on a water tank. It rested be- 
side the grey house, and their heads, as they stood on it, 
reached the open grating that ran under the roof. 

Twelve men stood on the water tank, peering through 
the grating. I think it was twelve, but I was drowsy. 
... I looked at the house once more. As I looked, a 
boy ran out holding his nose, and then I slowly closed 
my eyes. 

Down the cemetery's centre path are grouped pre- 
posterous busts of the rich dead, and it was these I next 
remember to have observed. 

"Gentlemen," I apostrophised them, "negociantes, 
dbogados and what not of Guayaquil! — ^the grave is the 
great leveller. You lived. I figure you, knowing your 



116 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

tribe, as mean and petty, corrupt even, up to the tricks 
of your trade, and so becoming, in course of time, *lead- 
ing citizens/ You died. You were rushed out here 
within six hours. Your ledger account was closed. At 
best you deserved oblivion; yet your next-of-kin, with a 
licence outraging art and nature, perpetuate you un- 
speakably upon pedestals. It was Zarathustra who cried : 
*We must adjust our values.' Set but a sledge-hammer 
to my arm, and adjustment shall be effected right rap- 
idly.'^ 

As my eye wandered over these hideous cenotaphs, it 
lit on the road leading from Guayaquil, where a peon 
came staggering under an empty coffin. It was a black 
coffin; on it was painted a silver cross. As the peon 
passed near me, swaying under his load, I wondered 
whither he was bound — and then he went into the grey 
house, where the men on the water tank were still peer- 
ing, and I settled myself down to an hour's sleep. 

It was four o'clock when I awoke. I yawned, 
stretched myself and ran for a little mule-drawn car 
which was about to start. Walking the town at dusk, 
I came to a plaza, to a bed of oleander and hybiscus in 
bloom, and to those same cathedral steps. Soft-eyed 
women in their mantillas passed in and out, a priest's 
voice sounded faintly, repeating a litany, and there was 
a low hum of response. White-suited men crossed the 
plaza, making for their homes, and innumerable crickets 
chirped the day's lullaby. 

I left Guayaquil before the next sunrise, crossing to 
the railroad in a river ferry. Sitting there in the dark, 
a boy polished my boots. Another sold me a paper, and 
in the grey light, as I read, a paragraph caught my eye. 
Yesterday there had been an autopsy on the remains of 
the dictator, Montero, but owing to excessive putrefac- 
tion no exact analysis had been possible. 



ECUADOR AND COLOMBIA 117 

The Guayaquil and Quito railroad runs for twenty- 
five miles through the swamps. It reaches then a belt of 
rich jungle land, growing the world's finest cocoa. Pass- 
ing through rising forests, it enters a deep glen, 
where a mountain stream rushes down, birds of rare 
plumage gleam from tree to tree, orchids and masses of 
tropical blossom brush the carriage windows. Above 
the forest belt, at over 4,000 feet, the sides of the glen, 
now quite bare, become high and frowning, and an all 
but vertical face of rock, seemingly a thousand feet high, 
thrusts itself across the track. The train takes this great 
face as it comes, in zig-zag. But the plateau is not yet 
reached; there are some hours more of heavy gradients, 
and one whole mountain side on the move, where aug- 
mented gangs raise the road-bed almost day and night. 
By mid-afternoon the train is traversing the barren 
Andean uplands, at over 10,000 feet; the solitary white 
mass of Chimborazo rises ahead. At sundown, the small 
town of Riobamba is reached, and the train stops for 
the night. 

Out on the plateau again, the road rises to near 12,000 
feet, and running over this bleak moorland is seen the 
paved causeway of Garcia Moreno. Chimborazo is left 
behind; but the volcano Corazon is showing, and over 
there Cotopaxi is throwing up smoke. We go down 
now, in long sweeps, to a little town among trees, where 
the Indians, in gay attire, rollicking drunk, keep a Saint's 
day, and an old woman, full of Michael and all arch- 
angels, is run over and done to death at a level-crossing. 
Then we rise up to the moorland again ; but early on this 
second afternoon come to a green country, to homesteads, 
and pastures thick with cattle, and as we sweep and 
curve, there is the volcano Pichincha in view, and Quito 
lying at its base. 



118 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

At the time Spain flung her mantle over South Amer- 
ica, the Incas of Peru were the most absolute of the 
world's rulers. From their high Andean plateau they 
ruled over half the continent; and when they sojourned 
in the northern city of Quitu, their courtiers daily tra- 
versed that famous highway of cut stone to the capital, 
Cuzco, more than a thousand miles to the south. 

But with the capture of Cuzco and its golden treasure 
by Pizarro, and his murder of the Inca, the suzerainty 
of the Andes passed to Spain. Hardly had the fatal 
news reached Quitu, when the conquistador Belalcazar, 
with 150 Spaniards, appeared there. The city only sur- 
rendered after bloodshed and torture. Even as the vic- 
tors entered it lay a smoky ruin; the temples were rent 
in twain, the two thousand virgins of the Sun, beyond 
ravishment, lay still in death, and the fabled golden 
treasure — a second treasure of Cuzco — had disappeared. 

The Spanish Quito was founded upon these ruins. An 
obscure period in its history follows, but this mountain 
city of the Indians was destined to become a strong, 
strong centre of the Roman faith. The first parish 
church, built in those very early days, is still standing; 
many more churches followed, and the convents and 
monasteries covered a quarter of the city. The Inquisi- 
tion, too, was set up in Quito. The oven in which, by 
auto-da-fe, heretics expiated their sin, remained intact 
until recent years, while the circular garotting stone, not 
so long ago, was being used by a thrifty miller in his 
mill. The year 1807 marked the completion of the 
cathedral. In the decades which followed came the revo- 
lution' against Spain, and Quito found itself capital of 
the Republic of Ecuador. 

When I came to Quito it was sundown, and a Saint's 
Day. The bells were clanging from fifty churches : some 



ECUADOR AND COLOMBIA lig 

thinly, in little spasms of tolling, others deep and power- 
fully, but all with the dramatic timbre that is Romanism's 
secret. I passed up the cathedral steps. The organ was 
swelling, and men's voices chanted, yet before I entered, 
feeling the vivid romance of the moment, I stood awhile. 
Yonder, sixteen miles to the north, where the rain clouds 
were banked up, lay the Equator ; yet the air was buoyant, 
almost chill, and in the garden of the pla^a just below me, 
roses and stocks and pansies were in full bloom. The 
town lay almost in a cup among the bare hills, on the 
left of me rising the slopes of Pichincha. Gonzalo Pizarro 
had fought the first viceroy of Spain here, Sucre the 
last, and I thought of the Scyris and the Incas, of the 
days of Spain, and the days of the republic, and of 
all the mysterious men who had made Quito's history. 

It was twilight now, but the peals and the clashes 
and clanging never ceased. They seemed to have called 
forth all the population, dressed in deep black, and the 
worshippers now. entered the churches in a stream ; this 
strange town up among the volcanoes, at the back of 
the world, was surely religion mad! 

I walked through the streets; at every comer there 
seemed a church, and I entered each one. They were all 
filled; and the men of Quito, who can be wild beasts, 
knelt praying as if their hearts would break. In the 
church of the Jesuits, the aisle, with its kneeling figures, 
lay in the blackness of night, but the high altar, where six 
priests in their red robes were prostrate, was blazing 
with light and gold. Through the windows of a private 
house high candles were burning, and in the empty room 
a body lay in an open coffin; amid this solemn tolling, 
this orgy of religion, it needed but a chariot of fire to 
descend, and an angel of the Lord to mount guard over 
the dead. Thus I came into Quito. 

At another time, I stood on a hillside above, and took 



120 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

stock of this strange town. With its sixty thousand 
souls, it lies in a sloping vale at Pichincha^s base. The 
mountain tops you cannot see, but in some four hours 
may ride to their white summits ; and the sight of sights 
up there, for many, is the sheen of the humming birds 
as they hover against the snow. 

The sounds which rise from the town are the tolling 
of bells (there are always bells tolling in Quito), and 
the trumpets of the army — clamant insignia of Arch- 
bishop and President, of the powers that be; besides 
these, in this republic of the mountains, no other man 
may flaunt himself. 

Yet one other sound does rise in Quito — ^the horn of 
the bull-baiters. It is blown when a bull, segregated 
awhile from the slaughter herd, is set on a lariat, and 
a mounted peon guides it through the streets, where men 
and boys goad it to fury, and the women lean far out 
of the windows, sick for a sight of blood. 

Looking down into Quito you see only the brown tiles. 
Then the low domes of the Cathedral stand out, and the 
towers of churches. There are over sixty churches in 
Quito. Some are now in dilapidation ; but the largeness 
of so many, the finely canned fagades, the old pictures, 
the ornamentation, the thought of rich and impressive 
masses being sung in this remote town up among the 
volcanoes, rivet the imagination. 

The modern spirit makes way, even in Ecuador; but 
the grip of the Church on the masses of these people is 
prodigious. Romanism will find her last stronghold on 
the Andean plateau. When Vienna, and Madrid, and 
Rome are sceptic, we shall see Arequipa a new Avignon, 
and the Pope himself, with all his hierarchy, at length 
installed in Quito. 

The greatest man Ecuador has produced, we must hold 
to be Garcia Moreno. He was assassinated in 1875, in 



ECUADOR AND COLOMBIA 121 

the plasa of Quito. With many, his fame tends to be- 
come legendary, even as the fame of Francia, the first 
dictator of Paraguay. 

Garcia Moreno, for his time, was a reactionary. He 
supported the Church. He saw the country needed roads 
— and he set the Indians to forced labour. Modernism 
meant little to him, or the opening of Ecuador to the 
world; but he was constructive, and he was terribly 
strong. He neither robbed the State, nor did he permit 
robbing. For once, in Ecuador's history, government 
service was efficient, offices well filled, taxes gathered, 
roads, bridges and schools built, and the laws obeyed. 

Like all the dictators, Garcia Moreno knew no fear; 
but he put the fear of God in others. A revolution 
broke out in the coast country, below Quayaquil. There 
was no railroad then, but the President, galloping on 
relays, dismounting, and dashing down mountain sides 
afoot, came to Babahoyo on the river, and thence, in a 
canoe, to Guayaquil — in two days! An English steamer 
lay in the river off Guayaquil. He seized it (as a pathetic 
protest in the consulate books still bears witness), cut 
away the forequarters, set up a gun, and within another 
day saw it manned and ready. Down the coast the 
conspirators awaited him, terror stricken. When they 
saw the steamer rounding the point, with Moreno on 
the bridge, they took to the mangroves and the bush, 
and the revolution collapsed; but for all the leaders, 
when captured, there was the dictator's verdict — and a 
quick despatch. 

Another time, to him in Quito, it was told how 
Guayaquil had become one big gambling hell, and once 
again this austere man rode down the mountain trail. 
One evening he appeared to the chief of police. De- 
manding a single officer, and waving aside all protests, 
he went out into the dark night. "Who is it?" one 



122 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

would cry. ''You cannot enter" ! "It is Garcia Moreno." 
Then the door opened, and a dozen white-faced men 
stood up to hear their fate. From house to house he 
went, through that night. "You and you," he would 
point, "will leave the country by the next boat. You 
and you will report yourselves to the government to- 
morrow" ; and gambling in Guayaquil was dead. 

What would Ecuador give for a Garcia Moreno to- 
day? The breed would seem to have died out. There 
has only been Alfaro of much note in these later years. 
Poor old Alfaro! Of those five naked corpses, dragged 
but yesterday through Quito, his, walloping along there 
at seventy years old, was one; his brains oozed out 
of his head, and a boy rode astride him, as on a horse. 

Somewhere midway between Guayaquil and Panama, 
an estuary breaks the line of Colombia's coastal forest; 
an hour's steaming inwards brought me to the settlement 
of Buenaventura, low-lying, equatorial, whence I was 
to ride to distant Bogota. The road to the interior 
passed through forest for forty miles, ascending then to 
green and watered uplands ; here, in the cool, my mount 
quickened his pace, leaving pack-horse and arriero far 
behind. 

A Colombian gentleman, well mounted, wearing 
poncho and Panama, now overtook me, and gave me 
^'buenas tardes." I saw he was a man of breeding. 

Rising presently in his stirrups, sweeping all the land 
with his arm, h^ turned to me — 

"My country is beautiful. Sir!" 

It was indeed! Where we rode was level — a water- 
shed — but all around the land rose and fell in long un- 
dulations; and it was green. In the valleys, by the 
running water, peasants had built ; beside their huts were 
flowering trees, patches of coffee or pineapples, breaks 



ECUADOR AND COLOMBIA US 

of plantain and sugar cane. On the uplands tcx), beside 
the stretches of forest, huts rose in the recent clearings; 
and the ringing of an axe came to us. 

Presently, riding along, a village of thatched houses 
was seen perched on the ridge. Farms lay below it 
on either side, herds of cattle fed upon the pastures. 
To the right, the land rose to a barren moorland, while 
out on the left, a league distant, stood a forest. It 
was sundown, yet the air had become alive with the 
quick cries of birds flying high, flying from over the 
waste and making, as one surely thought, for the forest. 
Yet it was not the forest they sought. These birds 
were green parrots — thousands and thousands of them 
— and they flew, one and all, to a clump of bamboos be- 
side a stream, that lay under the village ridge. As we 
rode past this roosting-place, final adjustment was tak- 
ing place for the night, and the multitudinous crying 
of parrots in those two acres of feathery boughs I shall 
not easily forget. 

This was the village of Carmen, 4CXXD feet in the up- 
lands. At the inn, awaiting supper, I lay on the green 
turf, and gulped the balmy night air. But a few hours 
before I had sweltered In the coastal forest, down by the 
equatorial sea, yet in a day's ride had entered a new 
world. At daybreak I rode on; crossing a forest-clad 
range at 6000 feet. The Cauca Valley lay far below, 
and by its edge, nestling imder the hills, the old town 
of Call, with its church towers and red-tiled roofs. 

The conquistador Belacazar, after founding Quito, rode 
northwards Into new countries. With a keen eye for 
fertile land, he established Popayan, and travelling down 
the Cauca, founded Call and Cartago. 

The Cauca Valley retains Its fertility. To-day this 
district, shut off from the Magdalena and from the capital 
by many leagues of mountains, is the richest in all 



lU THIS WORLD OF OURS 

Colombia. The people, too, are held in some repute; 
the town of Popayan, an ecclesiastical centre, having given 
ten presidents to the republic. 

Over the Cauca now lay the softness of an English 
park. Troops of horses fed on the long grass, herds 
of cattle rested under the immense trees. In each mile 
or so the eye lit on some giant and exotic syringa, all 
mauve blossom ; in a certain stretch of forest the odonto- 
glossum orchid, of the same colour, was flowering massily 
high in the trees, while beside the thatched peasant huts 
hybiscus and the pink antigonon grew. Anon, this be- 
ing a valley of the tropics, I passed through cane fields ; 
areas of this soil have lain under sugar for eighty years. 

At Cartago, four days from Cali, I left the Cauca, 
heading over the uplands to Manizales. This was a no 
less fertile coimtry; indeed, its richness staggered me. 
To each peasant on these uplands, to each new settler, 
Nature had allotted a hillside, a mountain stream, a patch 
of forest. His hut might rest beneath bamboos. In his 
garden, with but scant tillage, might grow coffee, cocoa 
and oranges ; in his clearings tobacco, maize, plantains 
and sweet potatoes ; while his cattle, his pigs and poultry, 
might find at hand a rich and ample sustenance. 

Yet between ideal and real, what a gulf ! Of all the 
men in this favoured land, was there one who realised 
its riches, or used one-tenth of its gifts? This slovenly 
and enervated race, living upon plantains like swine, till- 
ing little, growing but enough to support life, were not 
fit for their heritage. 

From the town of Manizales, a northern road leads 
to the state of Antioquia, where the land is higher, 
rugged, less fertile, and where, surrounded on all sides 
by a race sunk in climatic lethargy, a more strenuous 
people have taken to mining and commerce. The Antio- 
quenan, in Colombia, is indeed std generis; he is a moun- 



ECUADOR AND COLOMBIA 125 

tain Jew, transplanted from the Old World, and thriving 
up here in the New. When Charles V, importuned by his 
viceroy for immigrants, could spare none out of Spain, 
he sent to New Granada fifty families of Tunis Jews; 
and these, retaining many characteristics, though neither 
the Jewish faith nor language, have multiplied, and are 
become, even after dilution of the blood, the soundest 
community in Colombia. Do they recollect this in the 
souks of Tunis? I should imagine not. But a keener 
than the Tunisian Jew — the Syrian — has run across the 
scent. To-day, beginning as a pedlar, and passing to a 
land-owner, he is spreading over Colombia. 

The second day beyond Manizales, after a long ascent 
I came to the Moravia Pass, where, at ii,ooo feet, the 
track crosses the central range of the country. The. 
mountains here are wooded ; but so cold was the wind, so 
rugged the track, that I dismounted, and went afoot. It 
was a lonely road. For some hours I had seen no 
human being, when, at the top of the pass, five nuns 
rode past me on mules, wearing white sun bonnets, and I 
had hardly started down the farther slope when a great 
shouting and whistling arose. The narrow track, here 
at its worst, is cut for a distance along the face of a 
precipice, and at this spot two transport trains were now 
meeting. The descending train were horses, perhaps 
thirty, with half-a-dozen arrieros. Among these went a 
horse-borne litter, conveying to the Magdalena River and 
so to Europe and the operating table, a merchant of 
Manizales, in the last stages of an obscure and horrible 
disease ; two women with haggard faces rode beside him, 
and several servants followed the litter on foot. The 
ascending train of fifty or sixty mules, heavily freighted, 
was now on the ledge, and the mules, with the cunning 
of their species, were taking the wall. Struggling up- 
wards, grunting, they swung their heavy loads across 



126 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

the track; while the frightened horses, bumped by the 
packs, stumbhng among the boulders, stood in a narrow 
zone of safety, gazed terrified at the depths below, and 
snorted with fear. 

The trains passing at length, I went forward. By 
sundown the Moravia Pass was but a grey slit on the 
horizon; but I saw now what before had been invisible 
— ^the high white peaks of Ruiz and of Tolima. Next 
day I came to Honda, the old Spanish town on the 
Magdalena, and my ride was over. Rising with the 
dawns, traversing roads at times all but unrideable, using 
up three horses, I had travelled 250 miles in ten days. 
Physically I was fi-t; yet not fit as were Atoerto and 
Emiliano, the arrieros, travelling barefoot, who came in 
fresh as at the start. Indeed, the arriero is the best 
man in this land. Sweating in the valleys, winded on the 
high ranges, a 3omile day is yet child's play to him; 
he never lags, and each evening turns up smiling with 
the pack. It is a hard saying, but you must keep him 
poor; overflush in worldly goods, he loses himself, runs 
to seed, takes most surely to drink; a spartan heretofore, 
he now cumbers the earth. 

From Honda, in olden times, a famous mule trail — the 
camino real — led to the plateau of Bogota. Horsemen 
and pack trains still use this, but I, my horses gone back, 
my saddle sold, declared for the upper river, and the 
new railway route. At Giradot, a village terminus on the 
upper Magdalena, I entered the train, and came in a 
day's journey to the Sab ana. 

The Sahana, or plateau of Bogota, is spoken of in 
all Latin America. An outpost of that great plateau to 
the South, it lies at 8,500 feet, is perhaps forty miles 
by twenty in area, and of rare fertility. Its temperature, 
in this tropic land, is strangely cool. In the morning, 



ECUADOR AND COLOMBIA 127 

down on the .Magdalena, I sweltered, but by three o'clock 
was in the climate of an English April; bracken and 
gorse grew by the thickets, willows hung over the streams, 
and the children were red-cheeked. Towards the far 
side of the plateau, beneath a range of dark and lowering 
hills, lay Bogota. This was the city founded by the 
searchers for El Dorado, the city of the *'Holy Faith," 
with a population to-day of 120,000, and the capital of 
Colombia. 

This remote place holds you for its human interest. 
A fortnight's journey from the coast, shut off from the 
world, thrown upon their own resources, the upper class 
Colombians of Bogota have developed a culture of their 
own. English is known; beautiful French is talked; 
classical music is played. In each house stands a piano, 
brought — God knows how! — on a mule's back, over the 
camino real. There is a university, a diversified press, 
an art gallery of local work, and a plague of minor poets. 
The ladies of the city, sweetly demure in their black 
mantUlas, go to their prayers, and return; they are 
indolent, unformed, yet plastic, capable of better things. 
They are warm blooded. They are superior to the men, 
who, vain of their descent, their pure Spanish blood, 
their culture, their remote mountain civilisation, lack 
character, and are as useless in work as they are dis- 
honest in politics. From the time of the revolution 
Bogota became a city of black-coated politicians and petty 
intrigue. One may see, in the old Executive Palace, the 
window whence Bolivar dropped to the street and fled, 
and from that day political corruption has lain over 
Bogota as a pall. 

Facing the Plaza E^livar, the heart of the city, is the 
fine modem building of the capitol. Built with borrowed 
money, on which the state has defaulted, this makes a 
grandiose setting for the Colombian Parliament. The 



128 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

treasury is empty, and has been so for many years; 
were it otherwise, the rapacious would certainly loot it. 
Colombia is bankrupt. This rare and fertile land has 
been ruined. Her capital is dead poor, and her people 
of quality, worn out and useless, go threadbare in the 
streets. The Colombian paper dollar, issued on a gold 
basis, has lost all value whatever. The National Congress 
has assigned it a value of one half -penny — a mere token — 
and established, as standard currency, the British sov- 
ereign. *'Five hundred dollars to a pound !" sums up the 
handiwork of those who have ruled Colombia. 

In this country, let it be said, I received no uncivil 
word; I moved among a kindly folk. But the people — 
Spaniards of the Sahana^ lowland half-castes, Indians and 
negroes in infinite permutation, who form the Colombian 
race — have sunk deep, and will not rise again. In all 
charity we take note of their environment (that so potent 
factor) in the life of the Equator, the mixing of the 
blood. What might we ourselves have come to in Colom- 
bia? 

Physically the race is poor. It is streaked to the third 
and fourth generation with the taint of syphilis. On the 
rainy plateau, the men are contorted with rheumatism at 
fifty, dead at sixty. The blind are seen in every lowland 
village, and the halt, the scrofulous, the withered, form 
a great army. Their physical degeneration is completed 
by chicha; immense quantities of molasses, from which 
this ardent spirit is distilled, are conveyed over the coun- 
try in goat skins. The lowland Colombian boy of four- 
teen, exceptionally bright and intelligent, by twenty-four 
has lost half his mental power; the sinister effects of 
chicha are on him. The estanquilla — the small, retail 
liquor shop — is dotted thickly over the land. 

The mestizo girls are short and stoutly built, and by 
fourteen are developed Up to sixteen they are often 



ECUADOR AND COLOMBIA 129 

comely; but beauty's day in this tropic land is brief. 
For these young mammals nature has a sterner duty. 
Their breasts swell; their thighs are become bulwarks; 
their every instinct is to motherhood. At sixteen they 
marry, and at twenty-six — certainly at thirty — their 
career is run. They are now fat, coarse, and slovenly, 
mothers of six or eight children, physically played out, 
great consumers of patent medicines. Sitting by their 
doors, their long hair hanging loose, their white dresses 
unfastened, their feet bare, they smoke long cigars, fan 
themselves, and pass the time in gossip. They are polite 
and kindly like all the rest, and not unhappy; their 
men seem to be faithful, and are certainly kind. The 
really old women are mere beasts of burden, carriers of 
wood and water. The flesh is all gone from their bodies ; 
they sit on the ground, in some shaded spot; their wits 
have nearly left them, yet with a cigar between their 
toothless gums, they, too, have still a tag on life. 

Get out of Bogota, I advise you, and breathe the air 
of the Sabana. We will climb the sombre Monserrate. 
The track is steep; at this altitude one is easily winded, 
and the Indians who pass us, men and women, travelling 
with pack-horses to their mountain village, will not be 
overtaken. We turn aside near the summit, to rest by 
the old chapel, whose date is 1681. This is the dividing 
range. A shower of rain, falling on these hills, will 
flow to Magdalena and Orinoco in equal parts, Eighty 
miles from here all civilisation ends ; beyond these ranges 
are found the wildest Indians on this continent. 

Bogota, resting far below us, is not beautiful, but no 
town of the Andes ever lacks interest. The Sabana lies 
placid in the afternoon sun. One sees the small villages 
with their churches, the dark groves of Eucalyptus, the 
flocks and herds, the patches of bare, black loam, and 
those of rye, wheat and potatoes. It can feed itself, the 



130 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

Sabana; with manuring, an intensive culture, and a zest 
in the people for work, there might be great export to the 
lowlands. 

Trains cross the plateau. A short line runs to the 
South, and an hour's walk from the terminus brings you 
to the waterfall of Tequendama, on the Bogota River, 
a veil of lace dropping 480 feet. Northward, a line runs 
to Zipaquira, where the salt mines are worked by small 
contractors. Beyond this again, at Muzo, in the low coun- 
try, are the emerald mines — the finest deposits ever 
known. These salt and emerald mines are the property 
of the State; together with the monopoly of alcohol, 
their leasing out furnishes one-third Colombia's revenue. 

And this rich and beautiful land is bankrupt! Ruined 
by those sworn to govern it justly! I would that that 
eagle, hovering yonder over Bogota, were Nemesis ; and 
that daylight to-morrow might find the politicians lying 
dead in their beds. 



CHAPTER IX 

CENTRAL AND NORTH AMERICA 

I HAD not visited Central America; and one day, I 
boarded a steamer in New Orleans, thither bound. 

The ''Crescent'^ city is built round a defined bend in 
the Mississippi, where it Hes dead level and colourless. 
The French quarter of old is now indistinguishable, and 
the French tongue hardly heard on the streets ; the beauti- 
ful Creoles are not there. Riverwards, I saw a going and 
coming of stevedores, negroes, Italians, Greeks, and 
drunken sailors; but there was neither dancing nor car- 
nival on the levee, nor anyone ''waiting for the Robert 
E. Leer 

The river ran high with the rains, and was exceedingly 
muddy. As we passed down the ninety miles to its mouth, 
one saw here and there over the Louisiana flats a tilled 
farm, here and there herds of cattle; but the old sugar 
estates seemed closed down, and much of the land gone 
to seed. 

We steamed for two days across the Gulf — due south. 
On our starboard, some hundreds of miles away, lay 
Mexico, where in the old mining days I had been three 
or four times. The capital, Mexico City, and its sur- 
roundings, I knew well. The plaza, with its cathedral, 
was not surpassed in Latin America. On the cathedral's 
site, or that of the president's palace across the way, 
had stood the sacred altar of the Aztecs, worshippers of 
the Sun, and there, before the coming of Cortes, had in- 
numerable human victims rendered up their lives to the 
implacable Aztec gods. ''Blood! Blood!" was the cry. 

131 



132 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

"Cut the throats ! Tear out the hearts !" On their great 
days, the channels flowed red, the sacred pavements be- 
came sHppery; and it is told how a prince of the race, 
physically wearied with the morning's killing, fell swoon- 
ing beside the altar. 

Mexico was a considerable city, and many tramways 
left the plaza. One line ran to Guadalupe, a sacred 
shrine upon a hill. Another led to the bull-ring, that lay 
without the city. Another to the hill fortress of Chapul- 
tepec, whence one viewed those snowy cones of volcanoes 
lying in the south. Especially used I to note a line 
which ran out to the cemetery, for here "a funeral, with 
plumes and lights and music" went often by. It went by 
on a tramcar, the trappings supplied by the tramway com- 
pany. As it swept past, one saw the coffin under its 
wreaths, the priest standing before a draped and lighted 
altar, the kneeling mourners, black and decorous; and 
back of these, it seemed to me, there once stood a buffet, 
all spread and garnished for the journey home. 

In the capital, as elsewhere, one saw in the main two 
classes of Mexicans. Here went the aristocrat — some 
wealthy landowner ; and there, in his hundreds, the peon, 
poor and ignorant, who nine times in ten was a virtual 
slave. The priests, at this time, might not go in their 
garb in public ; yet the church, with secret friends in high 
quarters, was no less powerful than farther south. 

At the head of the State, of fifteen millions of people, 
was set Porfirio Diaz, already an old man. He came out 
of the South of Mexico. His father, at one time a sol- 
dier, kept an inn, and was a man of mixed blood; the 
grandmother was a pure Indian. At seventeen, although 
with martial instincts, young Porfirio entered a law office 
in the town of Oaxaca. His employer was the abogado 
Juarez, and these two, master and apprentice, were to 
become the greatest their country has known. 



CENTRAL AND NORTH AMERICA 13S 

Juarez was an Indian. But he was the greatest man 
in Mexico, and in those troublous times soon stood out a 
leader of the people. He led them against the Franco- 
Austrian army. He led the fighting against that weak- 
ling emperor whom Napoleon IH forced upon Mexico, 
and on the day Maximilian was shot, assumed the presi- 
dency. Next to him, in prowess and prestige, stood the 
young Diaz. He was a marvellous soldier; he won his 
battles, and was a general at thirty-two. Beaten once, 
by Marshal Bazaine, he was captured; but escaping, he 
rallied his army, and never again knew defeat. On the 
death of Juarez, whose great mental force had failed, the 
Vice-President of that day took up the reins; but the 
masterful Diaz, whose eye was to quell thousands, quickly 
ousted him. He was proclaimed president. He served 
his period, and in terms of the constitution made way 
for a successor. But the new man was weak, and a reac- 
tionary; as he stepped down, Diaz, who knew the coun- 
try's needs, again stepped up. The constitution was 
altered. He was re-elected again and again, and stood at 
Mexico's helm for just thirty years. He was a dictator, 
pure and simple. In the earlier years, to consolidate his 
power, he killed his enemies right and left ; and up to the 
age of over seventy he knew no rival. But he was en- 
tirely constructive. He raised the status of Mexico out 
of all recognition. He was the strongest statesman Latin 
America had produced. On the day Rhodes died, in my 
opinion, Diaz became the biggest figure in the world. 

When he approached eighty years old, his great powers 
failed. As he let go the reins, these fell into the hands 
of self-seekers, of capitalists, of exploiters of the people, 
and from all over Mexico came revolutionary threats. 
These centred in one Madero, a benevolent little demo- 
crat and visionary of great wealth; and in a flabby, fem- 
inine age, this flabby, feminine little person found himself 



134 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

the chosen of the people. Diaz, barely escaping with life, 
fled with his young wife to Spain. Admittedly, he was 
finished; but if Madero thought he could run Mexico after 
this great man, he was mistaken. In just two years he 
ran it to a standstill. Law and order were gone. Mil- 
lions had vanished from the treasury. Capital and prop- 
erty and life itself were no longer secure. Mexico's status 
had sunk below where Diaz found it. 

I had never seen Don Porf irio in Mexico ; but it was 
my good fortune to meet him in the days of his exile. 
As he drove with his senora in a certain thoroughfare, I 
hailed him, made my compliments, and in halting Spanish 
told him where I rated him among men. The old man 
was eighty-three. All the fire was gone from his eyes. 
If he did not grasp quickly what I said, at least the senora 
did. '*El homhre mas grande del mundo!" she echoed, 
and patted him in her pride. 

The third day out from New Orleans, entering an 
island-dotted bay, we dropped, anchor off Belize, British 
Honduras. 

A small wooden town lay by the water; and behind it 
the forest. The mouth of a creek stood to it for a har- 
bour; a schooner or two comprised the shipping. There 
was no railroad to the interior, hardly, indeed, a metalled 
road, and I could sense but little enterprise. The popu- 
lation was overwhelmingly negro, and life not strenuous. 
On this Sunday afternoon, as I walked, a regular breath- 
ing could be heard behind the jalousies, and once, to har- 
monium accompaniment, a singer's voice rose crudely in 
a hymn. The soil seemed poor and thin, as if it overlay 
a coral strand ; but trees and creepers were finely abloom, 
and the sea very blue and sparkling. 

Mahogany, and other choice woods, are this small col- 
ony's export. They are of considerable value; but repre- 
sent a wasting asset, and must now be sought at some dis- 



CENTRAL AND NORTH AMERICA 1S5 

tance in the interior. Then there is export of chicle. 
This is the sap of a tree., and the basis of chewing-gum. 
Much of the mahogany and timber trade has passed into 
the hands of Americans ; and the chicle is theirs by sali- 
vary wont. 

Saihng from BeHze on an evening, next dayHght found 
us entering a river, from whose forest-clad banks the 
mists began to rise. As they rose, an ugly settlement with 
galvanized roofs was laid bare, and we tied up to a 
wharf. A train stood here, ready to receive us. 

This was Puerto Barrios, Guatemala. It existed, one 
knew, through the railroad, through the export of ba- 
nanas; the low forests closed about it, and seemed to 
reek of malaria. As we sped to the interior, the forests 
fell back. For some miles on either side the rails, land 
had been cleared. It now lay solidly under bananas, and 
on many a siding stood a box car, which negroes loaded 
with the green fruit. We began to ascend. For a time 
the forests rose with us; then we passed to a dry and 
barren upland belt, with mimosas, but with little else that 
was green. In the afternoon, traversing watercourses 
and hillsides, we again rose up; and by evening reached 
the plateau, close on 5000 feet high, and Guatemala 
City, the capital. It was dark when I came to my hotel ; 
many roses were blooming in the patio, the air was the 
air of spring, and I lay down to sleep beneath blankets. 

The early Spaniards, with their unerring sense of lo- 
cation, had marked down these Guatemala highlands. 
Two great volcanoes rise up here, and at the base of 
one, an incomparable site save for eruption, they placed 
their city. It grew and prospered. It became, after Lima 
and Mexico, the third city of America. It was the seat 
of a Captain-General. Las Casas, greatest of all mis- 
sionaries, came here to his work. Here cochineal was 
discovered; and here, direct from Arabia, came a friar 



136 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

with coffee berries, giving to these uplands their now 
choicest product. So the city prospered till 1773, and 
was then wiped out. Eruption, the one catastrophe, came 
to the mountain, and the city at its base was no more. 
To-day, amid vestiges of a rich architecture, one counts 
the ruins of forty-five churches; a repeopling has taken 
place, but the new Guatemala stands a day's journey dis- 
tant, thirty miles from the mountain's base. 

The new Guatemala is a straggling, one-storied town. 
The Indians inhabit its fringes. Wretched mule cars 
traverse the roughly flagged streets. Beside the several 
barracks slouch the little barefoot soldiers. The central 
plaza is adorned with flowering trees; behind these the 
cathedral rises, the fagade is majestic, the dome is set 
in the mauresque manner with yellow tiles, but the in- 
terior is tawdry. Behind the cathedral the Indians hold 
a street market, where tobacco, coffee, dried fish, beans 
and earthenware supplement the fruits of the region. 
There are flowers too, and amid the squalor and poverty 
one breathes the air of an eternal spring. 

After dark, a melancholy, a deep silence, settles on 
the city. The poor slink to their hovels. The streets 
empty. The clatter of carriages over the flags dies away. 
But Guatemala is not at rest. At night a policeman 
stands in each shadow, spies move about, soldiers mount 
guard at many a point. In the presidency, nervous and 
expectant, sits Estrada Cabrera. He is dictator of Guate- 
mala. And no squeamish man, but a dictator of the 
first water, who has held this land twenty years now by 
the throat. Power has been his god. To hold it, he has 
cut and shot right and left. He has put hundreds out of 
the way, and hundreds — their sons, or brothers or friends 
— are sworn to do the like by him. Hence the terrorism 
that is over this land, the spies at every turn, the capital 
full of soldiers and police, the melancholy that comes 



CENTRAL AND NORTH AMERICA 137 

upon her at nightfall. The dictator is not wholly bad. 
His work for Guatemala has not been without its value. 
Given the chance, one sees him sobering into a construc- 
tive old age. But he may not get that chance. He has 
gone too far. Some day those about him will relax their 
vigilance, and he will be shot down like a dog. 

Guatemala has sunk. To-day she is little more than 
an Indian state. Her railways are American, as is that 
banana industry along her Atlantic coast. Her trade is 
mostly German, and several thousand Germans live here. 
Much of her coffee is German grown. Yet she is fertile, 
her western slopes are rich. The train goes winding down 
these, from the highlands to the shores of the Pacific, 
amid an idyllic beauty ; but one sees only the Indians, and 
everywhere a retardation. 

A steamer of the Pacific Mail lay off San Jose, and 
so I sailed from Guatemala; and in a short night's run 
came to Acajutla, a port of Salvador. 

This Salvador is the least of the nineteen Latin- 
American republics. Nevertheless, a great panorama 
spread itself, rising to extensive uplands, green and 
thickly wooded. In the centre of this great landscape a 
natty volcano smoked; I had seen it long ago, on Salva- 
dor's first issue of postage stamps. The country is fer- 
tile, and in great measure one of small holdings. The 
people are mostly Indian, or just touched with white 
blood, but are thicker set, and have not the good looks 
of the Guatemaltecans. They are peasants in the main, 
going barefoot; yet I judged them happy, and, after 
Guatemala, an air of freedom seemed to play over this 
land. 

The capital lies on rolling uplands — an peasant capital, 
with trees and gardens about it, and green hills around. 
The population is 70,000; yet it is but a flimsy town, 



138 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

wooden-built, because of earthquakes, with cobble streets, 
mule trams, and many Indian hovels. The open spaces 
are gay with flowering trees, and many green parrots 
go flying across. In the central plasa, fronting the gov- 
ernment building, and the wooden cathedral, a flam- 
boyant was shedding its vermilion flowers. A year be- 
fore, as the president of the republic passed beneath this 
tree, he had been done to death by some political rival. 

The nights were pleasantly cool. But there came, on 
my second night in San Salvador, the first heavy down- 
pour. The rainy season had set in. Each night now 
there would be heavy rain, and the roads would soon be- 
come impassable. Hiring a horse, a baggage mule, and 
a peon, I rode out for the south. 

The main road of Salvador keeps to the uplands, 
traversing a wooded belt, landmarked by extinct forest- 
clad volcanoes. I saw coffee growing in plenty, and 
maize and tobacco and beans. On the larger estates 
many cattle grazed. The peasants owned their fowls 
and their turkeys; but most especially their pigs, which 
were to be seen in great numbers. Fruit was plentiful; 
and the oranges, mangoes and avocado pears exception- 
ally fine. I imagine the avocado of Salvador is nowhere 
surpassed. At its prime it is one of the finest of things 
edible, much prized by these old Spaniards as an aphro- 
disiac. At the small inns, if the meat reeked of garlic, 
there were at least bread and eggs, oranges and avo- 
cados, and wonderful coffee. This was a well-peopled 
region. At Coyutepeque, fiesta was to be held, and the 
plasa was crowded. On the steps of the church Indians 
were beating drums, a summoning to distant listeners, 
whilst inside it the young girls of the town, in virginal 
white, hung up the last garlands. Festoons of frangi- 
pani — the flor de la cru2 — hung from each pillar, and 
the massy blossoms of flowering trees. The peasantry 



CENTRAL AND NORTH AMERICA 139 

were dressed up, very happy, and as yet noticeably sober. 
The last of the Salvador landmarks is the volcano of 
San Miguel, forest-clad like the rest. South of this, 
the little state, meeting the Gulf of Fonseca, comes to 
an end. 

The Gulf of Fonseca, some thirty miles wide, sepa- 
rates Salvador from Nicaragua. And at the head of 
the Gulf, to the East, Honduras has outlet to the Pa- 
cific; so that three states are seen to share its waters. 
The Hondurenan water at gulf head being shoal, Hon- 
duras has advanced to a small island, near the centre of 
the gulf, and there placed her port. This village, by 
name Amapala, lay on the water's edge, half hidden be- 
neath the vermilion of flamboyants; behind it rose the 
island cone, a thousand feet high, covered with primaeval 
forest. My objective was now Tegucigalpa, the capital 
of Honduras, lying ninety miles in the interior. Reach- 
ing the mainland, I secured mules, and a guide, and set 
out upon the three days* ride. 

The road into Honduras seems the one solid bit of 
work in that State's troubled history. It is good going 
in the main, and along the mountain sections stands for 
solid engineering. Some years before, it had lain in 
dilapidation, but the government now in power had set 
aside a sum for its repair; I was astonished to pass a 
number of road gangs, laying metal very solidly, and 
several steam rollers. 

But this was a poor country I rode through. Always 
hilly, sometimes rising into mountains, it passed from 
wooded scrub to savannah and again to scrub, but only 
in the valleys was there trace of fertility. Population 
was scanty. The people one saw were desperately poor. 
Their homes — frameworks of bamboo and palm leaves, 
thatched with red tiles — were mere hovels. Possessions, 
save pigs, they had none. Continuous war and revolution 



140 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

had ruined them, killed their aspirations, sapped their 
mentality ; and one saw that, living from hand to mouth, 
they would continue to slouch through life. 

The rains were now set in. Each evening they came, 
and there was a heavy pour until two in the morning. 
At three o'clock I rose from my stretcher in some small 
inn, woke the slumbering peon, and by half past three 
had mounted and set out. The air was fresh and cool. 
The mules travelled at a brisk walk. At exactly ten 
minutes to five a greyness crept into the East. It was not 
the dawn; but in half an hour had aired and scented 
the sky against dawn's coming. The sunrise came at 
half past six. In the midday heat the beasts travelled 
wearily; by two in the afternoon the day's ride 
was over. 

The Hondurefian capital was sighted from afar. It 
lay at over 3000 feet, under a range of considerable hills. 
An Indian precinct of hovels lay on the near side, and, 
crossing the river by a fine stone bridge, one entered 
Tegucigalpa. The river's bank rose in a bluff, and upon 
it there stood a barracks. Here, too, stood the presi- 
dency, a one-storied house, painted green, with a loop- 
holed fort commanding the bridge. Sentries were 
mounted, and a number of officers in uniform hung about. 
The little town, all told, held but 15,000 inhabitants — 
half-castes and Indians. Not less than 2000, it seemed 
to me, were soldiers, ragged and shoeless, armed with 
rifles long out of date; the officers, coated heavily with 
gold braid, were to be counted by dozens. At five in the 
evening a regimental band marched to the plasa. The 
bandsmen wore boots, had been taught by a European, 
and played passably. At this hour the government of- 
,fices closed, the stud^ts were released from the uni- 
versity, and I found myself surrounded by the elite of 
Honduras. A number of these wore well-fitting white 



CENTRAL AND NORTH AMERICA 141 

suits, with the Panama hat. Their manners were good, 
their bows were florid, but the handicap of their blood 
was not to be concealed. To the Indo-Spanish strain, 
the negro had here been added. One saw the crinkle in 
the black hair, the tiger's look at the back of the eyes. 
Instability was written on many a face, and the coun- 
try's cycle of intrigue and revolution made clear. 

There was once a banquet at Tegucigalpa. The presi- 
dent of that day attended, and next to him sat the 
consul of the United States. As they supped, suddenly 
the electric light failed, and the room was plunged in 
darkness. The president, fearing a plot, sprang up ; but 
the consul, crying **Sit down! You are safer," pulled him 
back to his seat. The light returned suddenly as it went. 
It revealed the consul, calm and collected; the president 
wiping a sweat from his brow ; whilst every other man in 
that room was on his feet, guarding himself with drawn 
revolver. That is Honduras. 

Returning to Amapala, the island village In the Gulf 
of Fonseca, I took the nearest way into Nicaragua. In 
a motor launch I left Amapala at midnight, in the pour- 
ing rain. At a fine dawn we entered a river. Sailing up 
through the forest, upon a waterway a full hundred yards 
wide, the pilot now headed into a side creek, narrow and 
tortuous, where the branches met over our heads. At 
length the boat grounded. A stone's throw ahead the 
creek itself ended, and here, a spot marked on the map 
as Tempisque, stood five huts. I stepped ashore in 
Nicaragua. 

The forest rose all around. A track wound through 
it ; it led, I knew, to the village of Chinandega, six leagues 
distant, but lay deep in mud. Neither horse nor mule 
was to be had, but an ox-cart was expected that night, 
to take away pigs, and would convey my baggage. The 



142 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

pigs, together with fowls, had been landed from a boat,, 
and were cooped now in a box. The fowls were tied by 
their legs to a long stick; they lay immovable in the hot 
sun, the prey of innumerable insects, and of a cloud of 
flies, and one was already dead. 

The people of the huts, a telegraphist, a couple of sol- 
diers and their women, were miserably poor and de- 
graded. They went ragged and barefoot. They were 
anaemic from malaria, and quite listless; when not em- 
ployed, both men and women would cast themselves into 
hammocks, and lie with closed eyes. At the dusk the 
rains came on, and mosquitoes began to bite furiously. 
The people of the huts ate their miserable supper, and 
by seven o'clock had crept beneath their mosquito nets 
and lay asleep. I sat alone, listening to the rain, stung 
to madness, until, at nine o'clock, there was a sound of 
wheels, and a lantern came swinging out of the forest. 
The ox-cart had arrived. It carried a big pen; and in 
the darkness and the rain a transference of the pigs took 
place. This lasted an hour ; after which my baggage was 
hoisted up, the fowls were hung behind, and we started 
towards eleven o'clock. It was densely dark in the for- 
est. A boy walked ahead of the four oxen swinging a 
lantern. I walked hour after hour by his side, clogged 
with mud, floundering into quagmires, tripped up ever 
and anon by the branches of trees, my arms working like 
a windmill. With a gradual stopping of the rain, mos- 
quitoes were upon us in thousands ; I lashed my face and 
legs unceasingly, and the sweat poured from me in a 
stream. As for the cart, with its solid wooden wheels, 
now it was stuck in the mud, now dashed from side to 
side; in the pitch darkness it went bumping and creak- 
ing, and only by a miracle escaped capsize; while the 
oxen groaned under the goad, the fowls cried out poign- 



CENTRAL AND NORTH AMERICA US 

antly, and the squealing of the pigs was something ap- 
palling. 

So passed my first night in Nicaragua. Dawn found 
me a scarecrow, caked with mud and sweat, bitten to 
death, and full, did I but know it, of the malaria germs ; 
but Chinandega was reached, I sat down to a superb 
bowl of coffee, and a pineapple, and my troubles vanished 
with the rising sun. That day, taking the train, I passed 
by Momotombo, the famous volcano of Nicaragua, and 
reached Managua. 

Managua, the capital, lies by the shore of a great lake. 
Forest-clad mountains rise on the far shore, while every- 
where stretches a rolling, wooded country, rich and fer- 
tile. It is a volcanic country. A mile behind the town 
lies a fathomless lagoon — a crater, where the washer- 
women go with their clothes; and on the horizon the 
smoke of Momotombo is always rising. A rich and 
beautiful country this, degraded by her people. They 
fight and fight. The men at the top rob the state, loot its 
treasury; and the downtrodden peasants have well-nigh 
lost incentive to produce. Nicaragua is bankrupt. She 
is most degraded. Her capital is a squalid and miserable 
spot, in the last stages of exhaustion. 

This country, being run to a standstill, had passed un- 
der the control of the United States. Americans were 
in charge of her customs, of the railway, and other 
sources of revenue, and a hundred American marines 
kept law and order in Managua. It was a purely busi- 
ness matter. Nicaraguan rivers and lakes form the 
nucleus for a canal across Central America. This, in the 
hands of a hostile power, might have menaced the whole 
American position at Panama, so the States prudently 
acquired it for themselves. They paid Nicaragua "option 
money," securing the right to these waterways for a long 
period of years; and upon the flight of the despot Ze- 



144 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

laya, and the country's collapse, they just stepped in to 
make their position secure. They acted wisely. 

Limon, the Atlantic port of Costa Rica, is but half 
sheltered from the sea. The long swell comes up, break- 
ing itself on the rocks, and the steamers at the wharves 
rise and fall, straining heavily at their cables. They come 
here — sometimes three and four steamers in a day — to 
load bananas; Limon sends more of these away than 
any port in the world. 

A steamer ties up. Ere half an hour has passed, a 
train load of box cars has been shunted alongside, some 
hundreds of Jamaican negroes have appeared, and load- 
ing is in progress. The negroes, receiving from the cars, 
carry the bunches to conveyors — travelling belts, driven 
by steam — ^which lift them to the vessel's deck; whence 
they are passed down to the holds, to be kept at a fixed 
temperature. The bunches are green, and all approxi- 
mate a standard size. The ^'professional" bunch of 
bananas, for shipping, ought to have nine hands, with 
ten fruits to the hand — say 90-100 bananas to the bunch. 
For bunches appreciably larger or smaller the shippers 
do not pay full value. 

The banana is one of the food staples. Together with 
the plantain, a larger and coarser variety, it is the chief 
food of milHons of blacks throughout the tropics. Chem- 
ically, it may be compared with the potato, but with less 
labour yields three times as much food. Bananas yield 
more food, over a given area, than maize, oats, wheat, or 
rye. Primitive stomachs absorb them with ease; Hum- 
boldt pointed out their virtues whilst Stanley proclaimed 
banana flour most digestible of all foods. But for me 
they are simply Hell. 

A railway runs from Limon to San Jose. At first 
through the forest; but soon it comes to the cleared 



CENTRAL AND NORTH AMERICA 145 

ground, where cocoa is growing, and the bananas, and 
where the labourers are Jamaican negroes. Then the 
line ascends through dense forest, beside a brawling 
stream; but the grade suddenly steepens, the curves and 
mountain faces stand out more boldly, and after an in- 
finite panting and pulling, you find the train emerging on 
the upland, the brawling stream but a silver thread in the 
forest below. 

You are at 4000 feet. The view here, where the for- 
ests merge into the rolling, green savannah, and the 
tropical heat dissipates in cool, balmy air, is one of the 
great moments of travel. You must yet rise to 5000 
feet, the top of the plateau, where the country lies in 
grassy meadowland ; then, you come out of the meadows, 
and sweep into San Jose. 

A certain calm, placidity, lies over Costa Rica's capital. 
It is a poorish little town; but about it lie a number of 
gardens, and an open commonage of grass, a mile square. 
Further afield are many small holdings of the coffee 
growers, and the uplands beyond rise in a vast circular 
sweep. Living on these wide and fertile uplands, among 
the woods, and the hedged meadows, and growing the 
finest coffee on the American mainland, are the best people 
of Central America — Spaniards, who have kept the strain 
a fuU degree whiter than their neighbours. That they 
have deteriorated from the old stock; that in four hun- 
dred years they have become wolfish, like all Central 
Americans, is evident; but it is fair to credit them with 
some constructive sense, and to note there had been no 
revolution for several decades. So much for Latin Amer- 
ica — the gorgeous, romantic empire of Columbus. And so 
much, alas! for its peoples. I know they are not to be 
judged as others; nature never gave these half-castes a 
chance. The blend, Spanish blood and Indian, was hope- 
less from the beginning. The heat ! The politics ! The 



146 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

remoteness ! . . . These people are what they were bound 
to be. Let us cross the Rio Grande, and enter America 
of the whites. 

I am in New York. It is the down-town end of Man- 
hattan, and the surging crowds pass me to and fro. All 
around such immense buildings rise to the skies, that 
my eyeballs are near bursting. Look at that office block ! 
It rises forty floors, and houses ten thousand souls. Think 
of the brain behind it ! This is not a building : it is just 
a vast frame of steel — the bricks, the stone facings, a 
mere afterthought. The foundations go a hundred feet 
deep ; it will give — I don't know how much ! — to the pres- 
sure of a hurricane, and resist tremors better than granite. 
Some daring brains have gone to the projecting of that. 
And some steel! . . . They juggle with steel over 
here. Enter. You will find thirty lifts; there are express 
lifts, not stopping below the twentieth floor, just as 
there are express electric trains in the subway below the 
street. 

Here is an uptown hotel — one of hundreds. It too, 
rises into the clouds. There are two thousand bedrooms. 
And to each bedroom a bathroom, with hot and cold 
water. They are ever so clean, these Americans. Nearly 
all clean shaven, too, and their barbers regular skilled ar- 
tists. Their teeth look so well; they are experted by 
crack dentists, men as daring in ivory as those builders 
in steel. Ever so many wear glasses, or spectacles, and 
again, in the background you sense a body of skilled ocu- 
lists. The very bootblacks put a shine which never shone 
on you before. These people are well dressed — rather 
to one mould though, and a shade too natty; a rough 
tweed or two in the crowd, a rough ulster, a soft collar 
here or there, would make all the difference. 

But that hotel! It is dinner time, and if you declare 



CENTRAL AND NORTH AMERICA 147 

for a fine one, you can have it. Here is the vast res- 
taurant. There the grill. There the Kaffay. You may 
order anything on earth. It will cost like nothing on 
earth, but will be served with a minute perfection. These 
two thousand rooms will average five dollars a night, 
for the room only — call it a pound sterling ; but there are 
tens of thousands in New York to-night who will casu- 
ally pay more. Americans are rich. You can't get away 
from it. They are so damned rich! Five thousand 
pounds a year cuts no ice in New York. If you walked 
down Fifth Avenue, and had less than a million dollars, 
you knew your name was mud. 

After dinner, you saunter down Broadway. It is a 
starless night, but a thousand electric signs in the heavens, 
flashing, and dying out, and flashing again, make all 
around as bright as day. Gigantic! Vastly original! 
And how this advertising strikes home ! See these crowds, 
who gaze up, cogitating, emotion in their faces; in this 
land a full-page "Ad/' well displayed, a skysign that 
flashes, and flashes again, grips the very soul. 

You say you will take New York for granted. But 
it is the same elsewhere. Everything that is material, 
and mechanical, these people have mastered. They are 
the world's specialisers. We have seen, in an evening's 
walk, the architects, the oculists, dentists, barbers, boot- 
blacks; steel-making, electric traction, hotel-keeping, ad- 
vertising — and everywhere they are on the top notch, ev- 
erywhere as good as the best. 

Just a moment — talking of specialisers. This is not 
New York, but the vestibule of a Western hotel. They 
have pointed me out, let us say, the ''Tomato King." 
(Pronounced Tomayto.) He is clean-shaven, with a 
determined chin. He looks uncouth, and would be out 
of place in Boston's drawing-rooms, but he puts up in 
tins the finest tomato soup in the world. He sits there 



14*8 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

chewing tobacco, squirting it with accuracy into the 
adjacent cuspidor, while he cudgels his brains over the 
problem of Oregon's pears. Did one but know it, he 
is putting as true and deep thinking into pears as ever 
Schubert put into composing songs, and next year will 
place on the market the finest brand of these ever. 

Then who are the Americans, you ask. The State 
and Municipal elections are on, and the hoardings over 
the country plastered with names. Mostly the names 
are Walsh and Murphy; Schmidt and Muller; Balboni; 
Mendoza; Vandyk; Ohlsson; an Isaacs and a Jacobs; 
an 'ovich, and several 'skis ; and they are all good Ameri- 
cans. Yet there are bigger men behind them, and a 
vast, inarticulate backbone — the real ballast; if their 
names got to the hoardings, you would read Adams, 
Clark, Parker, Scott, Russell, Murray, Shaw, Walker, 
Webb, Wilson; and many things would thereby be made 
clear. 

Climate! Boundless resources! Freedom to develop! 
Add these to the old stocks — to our own in particular — 
and you get the American. Because of the climate, he is 
energy incarnate. And his tradition is to use his head 
— get every ounce from his brains : never to slacken. In 
a word — he lives his life to the full. It is a big, big 
thing to do, look at it as you may. 

Yet Americans, with their material and mechanical 
mastery, are only human. They are too emotional. They 
are self-righteous. The nation is easily swayed by sug- 
gestion — good or bad. Waves of a puritan idealism 
sweep across it. And then, waves less ideal. And with 
each wave there rises a nation-wide cry: **We thank 
Thee, Lord, we are not as others." But they are. The 
forces of good and evil, of "Morgan and Harriman," as 
someone called them, wrestle together here as elsewhere. 



CENTRAL AND NORTH AMERICA 149 

Americans are just as human, as fallible, as the rest of 
us. 

But the most interesting thing in this country to-day- 
comes on no wave. It is this. American women are 
losing respect for their men. They are the mates of the 
most forceful, originating, doing race in history, yet they 
treat them, by and large, without respect, with scant 
politeness, often with thinly veiled contempt, as those of 
an inferior mould. 

And why? Because the men have set the tradition. 
Because these strong, forceful males have let the idea 
become nation-wide, and persisting, that the woman is 
superior. 

It is dreadful. Much more dreadful for the women 
than the men. In every true woman is the longing, not 
only to love, but to lean, to look up; and when she can 
do this — behold ! — she has gained her heart's desire. 

But to-day, in America, men proclaim they are weak; 
not to be leaned on, not looked up to. They proclaim it 
— God help them! — with unction; and straightway the 
minds of women begin to sour, their hearts to atrophy. 

An American I know was driving his car through the 
streets of Lx)ndon. There was an accident, and a factory 
girl fell with a broken limb. The American, laying her 
in his car, drove to a hospital, placed her there, and saw 
she had every attention. When she was cured, and about 
to leave, he paid her a farewell visit. And she said to 
him : *T'm only a poor factory girl, sir, and I can't re- 
pay your kindness to me, hut don't you eat no black 
jams" She knew. It was her ewe-lamb of knowledge. 
(That American, by the way, was Hoover.) 

Well I, too, am as that factory girl. I cannot erect 
your sky-scrapers. Nor juggle with steel. Nor build 
railroads. Nor comer copper. Nor create *'big busi- 
ness." But I have my ewe-lamb of knowledge, and 



150 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

nothing in this wide world can take it from me. It is 
this. Don't he humble to women. Go home, my dear 
man, with a new light in your eyes ; and when the wife 
gives you the old contempt, you give her the Old Adam 
. . . give it her bright and early, and she will begin to 
love you on the spot. 

But anyway I am for the Americans, to the end of the 
chapter. 

To cross the imaginary frontier into Canada, is to 
find a like environment, and a people strangely the same. 
How else could it be? One hundred millions must at- 
tract eight millions; and when they happen to be vital, 
efficient, worthy of compare, the pull they exercise is 
tremendous. 

Canada's personality is thus dominated as yet by the 
United States. It could hardly be otherwise. All things 
considered, there is no reason it should be. An Ameri- 
can, crossing the frontier, finds his ice-water, his weird 
breakfast foods, his coffee — not tea, the hot towel, the 
nasal twang, the natty tailoring, the grip, the sleeper 
"reservation/' the staring headline, the boosting par, 
the clean-shave, the Real-Estate lie, the supreme import- 
ance of dollars, the pathetic belief in "uplift," and the 
vague idea that the millennium is due about 1930; as at 
home, he finds a thousand similar thought processes ; and 
he even finds, though it be as yet incipient, the dreadful 
spectre of the boss woman. 

Yet the Canadians are not other than a virile, capable 
folk, and their land a land you can love. If you would 
realise the glamour of Canada, go out on the wheat 
plains of Manitoba at the reaping, and two months later, 
down in Ontario, walk through the scarlet and gold 
woods. And then, if you would be alone, sadly to feel 
winter stealing down from the North, enter this canoe, 



CENTRAL AND NORTH AMERICA 151 

pilot Tier along the still lake, in the dusk, between the 
fir forests. 

As for this empire — one cannot call Canada just a 
country — it may reach any destiny. Her resources are 
still boundless. Her climate does not enervate. Popu- 
lation will keep pouring in ; and those now living may see 
her with thirty — forty — ^fifty millions of people, rich, 
independent, one of the Great Powers of the World. 

In Newfoundland, across the straits, our oldest colony, 
a ramshackle railroad winds among the fisher villages of 
the West Coast, and crosses to St. John's over a waste 
of peat bog, morass and stunted forest. There seemed 
not one acre of sweet grass land, hardly a cow, hardly 
a sheep. The great island seemed given over to the 
caribou, who, migrating northward in the summer, head- 
ing south in the fall (and as Selous told me, who spent a 
season there) , almost on identical days each year, crossed 
and recrossed the desolate track in a multitude. Round 
about St. John's, a grey town inside remarkable heads, 
there lay a little open country, but on a twelfth of June, 
when I took stock, it was a cold and bleak spot. Fishing 
is clearly the island's standby, and salting the fish down ; 
but when the fleet comes in, St. John's carries home a 
cod, or two large haddocks, for its tea. Just one other 
industry was indicated. There was fine water power; 
there were vast forests. The making of paper, from 
wood-pulp, was indicated, which a big brain from over 
the sea has since translated into account. 



CHAPTER X! 

THE CARIBBEAN SEA 

The islands of the Caribbean, set out on Mercator's 
Projection, are seen clustered in the similitude of a lob- 
ster. The head of the crustacean is Northern Cuba, his 
tail reaches to the island of Granada, and he seems about 
to enter the Gulf of Mexico. But he will not do so. 
Florida is watching him; and Florida, with her Lake 
Okeechobee, is the head, eye, and neck of a turtle, whose 
expression, vis-a-vis the lobster, is slightly minatory — 
always supposing minatory turtles to exist. 

Far out in the Atlantic, distant from the clustering 
isles, lies Bermuda. This is but a tortuous strip of land, 
and if it be twenty miles long, is in few places so much 
as one mile wide. Ascending its highest point, I saw the 
strip to be wooded, to be formed of one main, and some 
hundreds of smaller, often diminutive, islands. 

Numerous coves indent the coasts, and about them 
stand the whitewashed cottages of the people. Inland, 
on their small holdings among the firs and cedars, these 
coloured persons raise early crops for the American mar- 
ket. This one grows his acre of early potatoes, Ber- 
muda's choicest food product, and that one his patch of 
onions. Here is a big bed of violets, and more and more 
they are laying down ground in white lilies. There is 
sea fishing, too, but the islands* main supports are the 
vegetables and flowers. Among the trees, or flitting 
across some flower patch, one sees the most brilliant 
little birds outside the tropics. Some are cardinal, others 
bright blue. The first, at least, are known in America; 

152 



THE CARIBBEAN SEA 15S 

but there is no replenishment from the far distant main- 
land, and these brilliant birds of Bermuda are dying out. 

Of all the Bahama Islands, I only landed on New Prov- 
idence. This was just a night's journey from Miami, on 
the Florida coast; yet the little steamer, heading across 
the rushing Gulf Stream, was tossed on that night most 
pitifully. 

Nassau, this island's town and the Bahamas' capital, is 
a poorish little spot. Sponges seemed its main trade, 
with some turtle fishing ; but all over the island, which is 
coral, the negroes were planting up the fibre-making 
cactus. Strange fishes swam in the sea here, which lay 
clear and sparkling, and extraordinarily blue. 

I sailed South to the island of Cuba. Of all her West- 
em Empire, by the middle of the nineteenth century, this 
island and Porto Rico alone remained to Spain. But 
Cuba was the biggest, the richest island in the Caribbean. 
Her exports of sugar and tobacco were exceptional. Ha- 
vana, her capital, was the largest town on these seas. 
Rich men were congregated there. The women, studded 
with jewels, drove in their carriages. The opera was the 
best in America. 

But beneath the surface were rumblings — rumblings 
long and deep. Spain was oppressing this island. Her 
officials, often corruptly, were draining its wealth. Her 
soldiers were lawless and cruel. And the more the people 
cried out, the fiercer became the repression. 

About this time, in the year 1848, President Polk of 
the United States made an offer for Cuba ; but the Span- 
iards, shouting out that their honour was deeply wounded, 
turned the offer down. The old conditions continued, and 
in due time the Cubans broke into open revolt. The re- 
volt lasted many years, and the reprisals of Spain were 
attended with infinite cruelty. 

In 1898 the United States took action. Spain received 



164 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

notice to quit. Failing to do so, she was driven out ; and 
just fifty years after the cash offer, Cuba fell to the 
United States by right of capture. 

The Americans held the island for a time. Yellow fever 
was stamped out. Plague was stamped out. An era of 
social reform was adumbrated. Then a flag was chosen 
for it; a president and vice-president were indicated; a 
new republic, with its ballot boxes and sanitary plumbing, 
was set up, and the American officials withdrew. 

In just five years they were back again. Their sani- 
tation was not in question; but it was found that they 
had omitted to stamp out the Cuban character, which, 
being Latin American, was given to corruption, and 
revolution, and in its higher aspirations to mere outward 
show and glamour. x\gain they put things right, and 
again departed, but the future of Cuba is a thing on the 
lap of the gods. 

Havana, when I went there, seemed in transition. She 
was still the wealthy metropolis. She was still the world's 
fine tobacco mart. But American capital had poured into 
the island; much of it had centred there and the fine old 
architecture of Spain was going down before the utili- 
tarian. Havana was nigh upon 400 years old, but her 
romance was ending. 

Less than a himdred miles south of Cuba stretches the 
North Coast of Jamaica. On a cove of this coast, his 
ships being leaky and w^orm-eaten, Columbus spent a 
whole year, and thereafter the island passed for a time 
to Spain. 

But for many generations now Jamaica has been Brit- 
ish. Spanish strains have thinned out, and disappeared, 
Spanish influences have faded away; and if but a strait 
separates this isle from Cuba, a world sunders their 
mentalities. 



THE CARIBBEAN SEA 155 

Some thousands of whites Hve in Jamaica, and the 
half-castes are numerous ; but the mass of the population 
are negroes, descendants of the freed slaves. Jamaica is 
their island. Their huts and villages set beside the shore, 
their fields and gardens on the hillsides or in the valleys, 
the island's long continued peace and security are very 
dear to these folk. In the main they are a decent, law- 
abiding people. In the main they are religious, and each 
village has its church and its chapel. Once I crossed 
the island on a Sunday. I saw the churches receive their 
congregations, clean and starched. I heard a hearty sing- 
ing of hymns; and for the afternoon relaxation — to 
gossip, to flirt brazenly, to discuss the banana market — 
I saw the knots everywhere gather. The banana has 
saved Jamaica. From Port Antonio, an island-studded 
bay on the North shore, banana-filled steamers are eter- 
nally sailing; and more and more this section of the 
island is bemg planted with that fruit. 

Jamaica can stand a more intensive cultivation. Much 
of it is mountainous; but these very mountains favour 
the coffee berry, and it is notorious that her "Blue 
Mountain" coffee can hardly be equalled. Nearly as 
much may be said of her best tobacco; and there seems 
no reason why the output of these superior products, 
together with the bananas, should not be increased. Gov- 
ernment land is still to be had. 

Wages were low in the island; for many occupations 
they did not exceed a shilHng a day. Despite cheapness 
of living, thousands of the negroes have gone to Panama, 
to Costa Rica, to Honduras, to all the coasts of the Car- 
ibbean. They have helped dig the canal; they become 
stevedores, handle bananas, work on the railways for 
wages Jamaica cannot pay. But sooner or later, the 
majority return ; and being the decent folk that they are, 
put their savings to good account. 



166 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

Next in the chain is Haiti, the beloved island of Colum- 
bus; whose Eastern half to-day is the republic of San 
Domingo — half-caste and Spanish speaking ; whose West- 
ern half is the republic of Haiti — negroid, French speak- 
ing and mysterious. This latter passed long ago to 
France, and in the i8th century thousands of French 
planters lived here; but so numerous were the African 
slaves they imported, so rapidly did these blacks breed, 
that they came to outnumber the whites ten to one. 

An insurrection of blacks broke out, and was never 
quelled. After this beautiful land had been drenched in 
blood and horror, such of the French as had survived 
massacre finally withdrew; while on January i, 1804, 
the blacks took a solemn oath to renounce white men for 
ever. 

From that day the country has passed from dictator to 
dictator, from revolution to revolution. Agriculture and 
trade have languished, and the land, once so fertile, has 
run entirely to seed. Indeed, these mulattos and negroes, 
confirmed in their autonomy by the far-reaching Monroe 
Doctrine, have gone farther than seed. Many have re- 
verted to the black superstition of the African forest. 
They worship serpents; and the innermost rites of their 
voodoo, performed to the drinking of human blood, are 
cannibalistic. 

Meanwhile they have wiped the white man from their 
lives. There are a few white traders in Haiti, mostly 
German, but outside the port towns I imagine them to 
live in real danger. A white man requires a passport 
to enter the country. He may hold neither land nor 
property, nor occupy official position. In fact, he is 
anathema ; the very saints and angels in the churches are 
painted black. 

From Kingston, I came in a German steamer to Aux 
Cayes, a small Haitian port. A number of blacks were 



THE CARIBBEAN SEA 157 

returning there from Jamaica. Seating myself in a boat, 
upon a pile of their baggage, I was rowed to the landing 
wharf. 

I had but passed on to the sand, on to Haitian soil, 
when a shouting reached me, and the captain of the port, 
followed by a rabble, ran up. He was becomingly dressed 
in deep mourning. But he was a nigger, fifteen parts in 
sixteen black, and his eyes were blazing. 

"Where is your passport?" he asked, in a thick patois. 

I produced it, correctly vise. 

"It is not in order." 

"Pardon me. It was vise in Jamaica." 

"It is not, I tell you!" Summoning. a barefooted sol- 
dier, he was about to convey me before some black tri- 
bunal ; but I was in transit ; the steamer, I knew, would 
sail within the hour, and such delay was out of the ques- 
tion. 

"If you will permit me, Monsieur/' I said to him, "I 
will return at once to the steamer." 

The idea suited him, and I was escorted to the wharf. 
As I put off, the black rabble, knowing me turned back as 
an undesirable, as one not fitted to enter their country, 
jeered very openly. When still five hundred yards from 
the steamer, one of the two boatmen, a powerful negro, 
stopped rowing. 

"Give me money !" he said in English. "Give me five 
dollars!" 

I answered him: "The fare is half a dollar. I will 
give you a present when we reach the steamer." 

Instantly heading around, the two started rowing furi- 
ously for a distant part of the shore. I looked at the re- 
ceding steamer, at the powerful negroes before me and, 
jumping up, made a dash forward. 

My opponent was on his feet. Seizing an iron row- 
lock, he stood as if about to brain me, shouting at the 



158 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

top of his voice; his profile was set against a blue sea 
and a distant grove of palms. 

These two men, I figured, could be overcome. But 
what then? The steamer lay far away; but near at hand 
five fisher boats already converged on us, or a dozen 
negroes in all, hostile to a man, and behind them, as I 
well knew, the whole of Haiti. 

Thus we stood for the space of perhaps eight seconds ; 
when discretion became the better part of valour. Taking 
a five-dollar piece from my pocket, I handed it to the 
negroes without a word. This they examined; then we 
all sat down, and the boat was headed again for the 
steamer. But contempt was in their eyes ; and they burst 
into a loud singing as of those who triumph in battle. 

Then I found myself in the island of St. Thomas. This 
was an isle but a few miles long, mountainous, of no 
economic value, yet possessing, in the heart of the Carib- 
bean, a remarkable harbour and coaling station. So 
strategic was this harbour of St. Thomas, that the Ger- 
mans were reaching for it, whilst the United States were 
to buy it for cash a little later on ; but in my time it was 
still the property of Denmark. 

Entered by a narrow channel, an amphitheatre of hills 
rose around the harbour, and the town of Charlotte 
Amelia lay at their base. A Danish flag floated over the 
old fort, but of Denmark little more was to be seen, and 
only the English tongue was to be heard. In the long 
main street, the crowd that passed was a black crowd with 
a leavening of whites. There were the Danish gendarmes, 
with no shade to their caps, in a uniform of bright blue. 
There were just a few old Danish ladies, dressed primly 
in black. With their baskets, they were to be seen in 
the marketing hours, but had retired before the heat of 
the day. 



THE CARIBBEAN SEA 159 

I judged these were the widows of one-time officials, 
now lying in the cemetery beyond the town, who were 
living out their lives upon a pension. Of greater interest 
were a number of white men going barefoot, strangely 
unkempt, mostly hawkers of fish, whom the blacks re- 
garded with no respect at all. These men were of French 
descent, from the French island of St. Barthelemy, and 
were here to the number of perhaps a hundred families ; 
but who, upon achievance of a certain saving, return to 
the island of their birth. They are a hard-working lot, 
and expert fishermen. Their women, who plait the rough 
straw hat of the island, are highly prolific. These people 
have no learning. They live in hovels. They are sunk 
to the level of the blacks; yet for a number of generations 
now they have kept their blood untainted. They are 
pure white. Not for gold will these women of St. Bar- 
thelemy have sexual truck with the coloured, and I hold 
them, uncultured and barefooted though they may be, 
proven of a great chastity. 

In my days on St. Thomas I both rode and walked to 
the divide, to the hill tops, a thousand feet high, and from 
their crests viewed most of the island. The blue waters 
of the harbour, the nestling town, the wooded slopes, lay 
to this side; and to that, when I passed over the crests, 
lay the uncleared forest, sweeping down to a sparkling 
sea. Across these hill-paths came a few blacks. One led 
a cow, with its calf, another drove some horses, and 
there came women returning, who had carried in fruit 
to the market. Two stylish young negroes rode past. 
They were well mounted, carried shotguns, and a servant 
boy followed upon a donkey. 

"Where are you going?" I called to them. 

"We are going to shoot pigeons." 

An industry of St. Thomas, the only one outside of its 
harbour, is the distilling of Bay Rum. Bay leaves grow 



160 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

on the nearby island of St. John, where they are plucked 
and macerated with the raw liquor ; and some half a dozen 
firms in Charlotte Amelia undertake its distillation. As 
I stood in one of these distilleries, a negress entered, laid 
down her shilling, and departed with a bottle of Bay 
Rum. This might have been cleanliness; but it had 
looked more like thirst, and I put the question. 

"They drink it now and again," was the answer. "It's 
pure material, and 51% alcohol; but you must get used 
to the taste." 

At night a cool breeze blew across the harbour. Un- 
der the trees by the landing were benches, and here I used 
to sit in the breeze until a late hour. The town lay very 
still. And when her lights had gone out, there remained 
but two glowing red beacons. These shone high upon 
the hillside; they gave entering seamen the line of the 
channel, and burned throughout the night 

Upon a dark and midnight hour, as I sat there, came 
suddenly a cry of "Murder!" Again it came, from over 
the water; and upon its heels, in a man's voice, five or 
six such full-throated screams as I had never heard. These 
ceased, and there was silence; then lights gleamed, and 
several gendarmes appeared, running, who put out in a 
boat. 

In the flashes of a sheet lightning which played that 
night, I saw them row out a hundred yards, and board a 
schooner. Dirty work had been afoot. They told me 
that a negro lay with his head cut open. Another, a 
drunken bully, stood over him, murder in his eye; who 
was presently chained, and rowed ashore, and lodged in 
the old fort of Denmark. 

At another daybreak, I lay off Basse Terre, capital of 
St. Kitts. Wooded hills rose in the West, but this was 
an island more rolling than mountainous. Sugar was 



THE CARIBBEAN SEA 161 

growing; and on the land back of the town the negroes 
were planting cotton. 

Gazing out over the sea, I saw the small island of 
Nevis. Its harbour lay eleven miles from Basse Terre. 
With the day before me, I chartered a boat, and after two 
hours' sail set foot there. 

It was one o'clock in the afternoon, and the village of 
Charlestown lay asleep. But a horse and trap were 
found, and I drove toward the uplands. This was an 
island of some 32,000 acres, and sloped to the foot of the 
central peak, an extinct volcano, that rose up high and 
forest-covered. In days of old the island had been a 
favoured spot, the centre of a planting aristocracy; now 
less than fifty whites lived upon it, the great estates were 
no more, and one saw the ruins of their houses and sugar 
mills. 

Nevis has had her events. Upon a day in 1787, the 
planter aristocracy being assembled at *'Montpelier," two 
naval gentlemen drove up to the house, and the company 
then repairing to the adjacent Church at Fig Tree, Cap- 
tain Horatio Nelson, H. M. S. Boreas, was married to 
the widow Nesbit. The bridegroom lived to achieve im- 
mortality. His best man, the Duke of Clarence, lived to 
become William IV. The lady was comely, and only 
twenty-three, but it is possible, remembering certain 
things, that she lived to rue the day's contract, which is 
still to be seen in the old register of the Church. 

Down in Charlestown village, by the seashore, I saw 
another ruin of a house. Here was bom, and lived as a 
boy, Alexander Hamilton, whose intellect, next after 
Washington's character, was to give the United States 
their splendid send off. 

The next step was the island of Antigua — again Brit- 
ish ; and here, defying the heat, I made my excursion to- 
wards the interior on foot. Along the country roads 



162 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

came the blacks to market, uncouth females mostly, their 
skirts caught up curiously around the waist, shouldering 
heavy loads; yet for so poor a community, a number 
drove donkey carts. The capital town of St. John's lies 
picturesque upon a bay, its rise topped by the Cathedral, 
by Government House, and a grassy park. St. John's is 
a negro town, just as the island is negro, but you will see 
the names on shops are Portuguese, and you will hear, 
as at St. Kitts, that the land is becoming Portuguese too. 
In a labour scarcity, some fifty years ago, these islands 
drew on the men of Madeira. They came — poor, igno- 
rant peasants ; they served their indentures ; and many of 
them staying on, they acquired after infinite toil both 
money and land. Their children continued to acquire; 
and the blacks, who had no such sustained power of toil, 
yielded up more and more. A Portuguese, dying in St. 
Kitts, left over a hundred thousand pounds. He owned 
the estate to which he had come out indentured. An- 
other was a Member of Council in Antigua, and was 
cited as the island's benefactor. 

Again at daylight we lay off Guadeloupe, where we 
entered the island-studded harbour of Pointe-a-Pitre. 
Here was a tropic land indeed! About the low shores 
grew a riot of vegetation, of palms here, of mangroves 
there, and behind them all the trees of the forest. The 
town itself lay half bowered. Avenues of hoary trees 
rose about it. Flamboyants shed their vermilion upon 
the roofs. In the country to the west, expanses of sugar 
grew; they seemed richer, more verdurous than any in 
the Caribbean Sea. On the uplands, across the vast bay, 
forests and plantations were seen, and the distant moun- 
tain mass of Soufriere, capped with mist. 

It was a Sunday morning. The town was en fete for 
a religious festival, and decorated, and all the people were 



THE CARIBBEAN SEA 163 

about in their finery. In the better streets, to a greater 
number than I should have imagined, French ladies lined 
the balconies. They awaited the processions; and soon 
came the bishop, walking beneath his canopy, with escort 
of clergy, choristers and incense bearers, carriers of sa- 
cred banners, and of the flag of France. Following came 
religious deputations from the smaller towns. The parish 
priest, a Frenchman, would head these, chanting, and 
then there swept by, singing in response, a number of 
stylishly dressed negresses. These women were posi- 
tively chic; and I realised that this Guadeloupe crowd, 
negro as it might be, was Parisian compared with the 
homely, uncouth figures who move about our own islands. 

These French women on the balconies clearly set the 
style, and there were thousands of negresses in Pointe- 
a-Pitre that morning who had absorbed something of it. 
A few rose to silk; but if the most wore only cotton 
and prints, they carried them off, and their ample skirts 
swept the ground in the grand manner. The colouring 
was brilliant ; the women's turbans lent a noticeable glam- 
our to the scene. Where mourning was compulsory, it, 
too, was in keeping with the fete; the ruffs and swath- 
ings of crape looked to be extraordinarily rich. 

Here was a negro community dressed up to the nines. 
Its keynote was a richness, an ebullience, clearly denoting 
a monetary ease ; and that richness of verdure, that trop- 
ical ebullience I saw all about me, explained it. The 
French rule lightly. The coloured people under them are 
not unduly exploited. Neither do we, on neighbouring 
isles, exploit; yet our own blacks have not the spending 
power of Guadeloupe. 

Again we sailed, and an afternoon's steaming brought 
us to one of those islands rising mountainous from the 
water's edge. Bold and serried, and one vast forest, the 



164 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

peaks rose this evening into the mists; but as twilight 
drew on those lifted, and there was revealed, fresh and 
dripping, a panorama of the island's mountain side. It 
was the apotheosis of dark greens. 

This island was Dominica. We lay that night off the 
little town, a speck beneath the mountains ; and at day- 
break I climbed them, and was received for a time into 
their shade. Then I strayed into Roseau's botanic gar- 
den, which is not excelled this side of Rio; I heard dis- 
quisitions upon the lime, and upon Dominica's future, 
and was rowed aboard the steamer once more. 

As you sail southwards, hardly have the mountains of 
Dominica receded, when those of Martinique rise from the 
sea; skirting her coast, a gulf is now entered, and after 
a voyage of less than five hours, the anchor drops. 

Here is one of Nature's harbours — a bluff running out 
to sea; the which, taken hold of by France in 1673, t>e- 
comes a vast mediaeval fortress of cut stone. Thus orig- 
inates **Fort de France" and here, under the shelter of 
its guns, grows up the capital town of Martinique. 

History notes Fort de France as a town of culture and 
importance. Officialdom centred here. The fleet made 
it headquarters. Many wealthy planters lived on the 
cool uplands, at an easy ride from the town. Great per- 
sonages of France passed to and fro. Madame de Main- 
tenon lived here some years. Josephine de Beauhamais 
was reared on a plantation across the Bay. 

These days were in the long ago. Martinique enjoyed 
her great period, and will live in history; but with the 
abolition of slavery she entered her twilight. No denser 
a twilight than other islands of this region were to enter, 
yet a real decadence, in which the cultured and still solvent 
drifted back to France; fine buildings of stone gave way 
to wooden shacks, and blacks and mulattoes entered into 
inheritance of the island's future. 



THE CARIBBEAN SEA 165 

Nature, at least, has stood by Martinique. Flamboy- 
ants shed their glory upon Fort de France. Wonderful 
trees grow about its precincts. The hills that rise around 
it are wooded and richly green; and on its savannah, 
where Empress Josephine stands in white marble, the 
palms rise a hundred feet high. 

A typical French chauffeur stood by the hotel door. 
His machine was no town hack ; and upon guarantee that 
it could face the mountains of the northern road, he 
found himself engaged for the morrow. 

We pulled out at eight o'clock, and ascending to the 
uplands, reached a hog's back, five hundred metres high, 
where we travelled in cool air. The white planters of old 
are vanished from these uplands. The people one sees 
are black, or coloured ; as at Guadeloupe, they assimilate 
the French style, but there was no vestige of the famed 
Creole beauty. The road is wildly devious. At each turn 
a new vista of mountain, or valley, or leafy verdure, opens 
out, and presently we pass into a dense mountain forest. 
So we travel for an hour; and at last, descending to 
clearings and cultivation again, we see the ocean. North- 
ward of us rises a solitary mountain mass. A mist en- 
circles the summit, whilst its sides and all the country 
round are bare and dead. This is the volcano of Mont 
Pelee. Yonder strip of mud, a mile wide, which stretches 
from its cone to the seashore, was belched out on a day of 
1902; and here, just below us, is Saint Pierre, that town 
of 30,000, which was asphyxiated that day, then blotted 
out. 

Saint Pierre lay along the sea, which reaching, we pass 
into the Rue Victor Hugo, the one-time principal street, 
now cleared of its debris. The old walls rise in places. 
Here stood the cathedral, and there the theatre; 1 little 
further, the house of the wealthiest man. But in the 



166 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

main there is obliteration, a volcanic debris, and over all a 
growth of rank verdure. 

Dotted up and down the long street, to me the strangest 
sight of all, walked a matter of a hundred negroes. In 
their white clothes, among so much that was grey ruin, 
they stood out clear, and their walk was the leisurely stroll 
of residents. Their women, too, had formed a market, 
and at a spot by the shore offered their fruits and vege- 
tables. But one solitary being had escaped the holocaust 
of 1902, yet here was the blotted-out spot almost animate 
again; and I thought of those scientists who, sterilizing 
a broth with infinite care, are presently witness of life's 
recrudescence. 

Barbados, where I now headed, is an island of some 
twenty-one miles by fourteen, where is seen neither moun- 
tain nor forest, but a low-lying coral strand. Bridge- 
town, the port, is an open roadstead. The houses are 
painted ; the streets, under their coral macadam, are pure 
white; the sun shines fiercely, and the glare is intolerable; 
yet there is plenty of business, a loading of sugar, a great 
carting of hogsheads of molasses, an overflowing negro 
life. Landward, across the whole island, the country 
rises in the gentlest slope, and is seen to be nearly desti- 
tute of trees. Where the soil is fertile, every acre lies 
under sugar cane; where thin and rocky, an immense 
number of the saddest little wooden houses are pitched. 
These are negro homes. As one approaches Bridgetown 
they increase in density. In its purlieus they achieve a 
nomenclature; and I passed by "Albertville," "Melville," 
and "Jehovah Jireh.'' 

Barbados could just support her teeming population. 
In a lean year there was a deal of quiet suffering among 
the blacks, and the times were good indeed when men 
failed to grasp at a shilling a day. But these people love 



THE CARIBBEAN SEA 167 

their island, and do not willingly leave it. Living is 
cheap, and the climate healthy. The government is be- 
nevolent. The blessings of peace have rested on Bar- 
bados from the beginning, and a quiet philosophy is upon 
her people. 

I passed on to Trinidad, where extreme tropic beauty 
is again seen. Standmg on the savannah of Port of 
Spain, towards sunset, I looked out on a cameo of verdure 
as fair as anything on this earth. 

At a stone's throw from Trinidad lies the Venezuelan 
mainland; and at a day and a half's sail, south, lies 
Georgetown, British Guiana. Beyond the interests of 
its surroundings — the wide Demerara River, the gloomy 
forests so near, the sugar lands, the rich vegetation — this 
town holds a great human interest. To work the sugar 
estates, in days gone by, government brought in many 
thousands of negroes, of Indian coolies, and of Portu- 
guese from Madeira, whilst there was also a big influx of 
Chinese traders. To these add the aboriginal Indians, 
now greatly reduced in numbers, and the British them- 
selves. These six races, brought together on the banks of 
this Guiana river, in a hot and luxuriant climate, have not 
failed to propagate. Miscegenation, unions of race with 
race, took place in infinite permutation, and the result 
to-day is shown in human blends which you will find 
nowhere else. Quite a number of individuals carry the 
blood of the six races, and there must be many in George- 
town who carry the blood of four. Despite it all, the 
young people grow up often physically attractive, and 
though brown as its sugar, think of Demerara, and Dem- 
erara only, as home. They, in their turn, breed apace; 
but being deeper in the grip of nature than in aught else, 
they often forget to marry. So many babies in Guiana 
are bom out of wedlock, that the Anglican clergy are 



168 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

put to inconvenience. In the cathedral of Georgetown 
(it is announced by leaflet) the children of the married 
will be christened on Sundays and Wednesdays ; for the 
illegitimate, the Kingdom of Heaven is opened on Mon- 
days only. 



CHAPTER XI 

UP AND DOWN EUROPE 

The Continent of Europe always attracted me. From 
the early German days, onward, the more I saw it, the 
oftener I returned. I have crossed to it by twenty -two 
routes, been in all the capitals, and know it well. 

Each time I set out on a journey, be it but to-day's 
crossing from Dover, the old romance surges within me. 
I am going abroad! A new adventure — it matters not 
where — is about to begin! This evening, as I have been 
able to time the occasion, Faiist will be sung at the Paris 
opera, and in the Brocken scene the ballet music will be 
danced in its entirety. To-morrow morning, this being 
late spring-time, I shall go out to see the chestnuts 
flowering at Versailles. In the afternoon, ascending to 
**trim Montmarte," I shall visit Heine's grave, and to- 
wards evening drive in the Bois. The question of dinner 
will be raised. If there is a lady in the case, she may 
plump for Paillard; if alone, all that is best in my palate 
will cry "Voisin!" although sometimes a small voice 
has whispered to me ''the Cafe de la Paix." 

Next morning I start for Nice. I do this in the month 
of May, when the world is hastening North from the 
Mediterranean. Nice and those Southern slopes are 
now in their prime; indeed, you may cross this sea to 
Algeria, to find May the month of months, and the whole 
earth carpeted with wild flowers. 

Nice is nearly empty save for her own people. At the 
Palais de la Jetee final performances are being given, and 

169 



170 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

after many years I hear again my beloved La Mascofte. 
At the Casino Municipal, strolling from the tables, I 
watched a tall and magnificent man who led about a 
tatooed woman. He was six feet high, scented and curled ; 
his evening clothes fitted to perfection, and he moved 
through the crowd with assured mastery and grace. "May 
I call your attention to this lady," he would cry, "Elk a 
cent cinquante mille points de tatouage, en qiiatorze cou- 
leurs." To test reality, hairy hands are laid on her flesh, 
podgy fingers probe her back, her legs, her breasts; as 
he reaches for a bit of silver, or it may be a copper, he 
gives each donor a charming smile, and the courtly bow of 
a prince. 

Sitting in the gardens of the Place Massena, each 
month of May, you will see several — it may be as many 
as half a dozen — ^young women of elegant appearance, 
looking strangely dejected. These are human wreckage 
of the Monte Carlo season. One afternoon, the music 
being ended, I ventured to address a handsome young 
woman of superior mould, who sat pensive and alone. 
She was Franco- American, spoke perfect English, and 
had just seen her protector go down in financial debacle. 
She now spoke of opening a boarding house in some quiet 
street of Nice. A second case was that of a governess, 
or companion, well into the thirties, passee, but clever, 
and as good a talker as you will find. We walked into 
the hills behind Nice, passing the gardens of the carna- 
tion growers, and another afternoon I took her, by the 
tramway which wends round the coast, to MLnte Carlo 
itself. We ascended by the cog-wheel to the heights of La 
Turbie, walking down through the olive woods into the 
town. As we neared the Casino she became excited, and 
when we stood before the tables, and I placed a rouleau 
of five-franc bits in her hand, this clever and experienced 
woman went to pieces. She gambled wildly, without any 



UP AND DOWN EUROPE 171 

thought, taking always the maximum of risk, and while 
the money lasted she was lost to her surroundings. Pres- 
ently it was finished; whereupon, removing her shabby 
gloves, she took a purse from her pocket, and with trem- 
bling fingers drawing from it a louis and some silver — all 
that was left to her in the world — slapped them unavail- 
iiigly upon the table. 

Poor, passee^ little woman! So that was the joint in 
her armour. A few weeks before, coming to Monte Carlo 
for the first time, she had there risked, and lost, her 
hoards of Frs. 16,000, and now she looked out on a deso- 
late world. I had luck that day, and was able to replenish 
her purse with some eight louis. Had she not given me 
lessons in idiomatic French? 

At Marseilles, I boarded the evening train for Spain. 
At four in the morning, just at the daylight, we came to 
tKe frontier. There changing carriages, and the Spanish 
train entering a long tunnel, you feel that at the other 
end of this all things will be different. "Here is the land 
of tnanana/^ I said, as the train came out of the tunnel 
into Spain ; it was just half past four, and as I looked out 
a band of peasants stood there tending their vines. I was 
to learn that the peasant of Spain, sleep as he may In the 
midday sun, works early, and works late, and judged as a 
peasant is rather an admirable person. 

A young Englishman shared the compartment. He 
spoke Spanish, but I could not have placed him in a 
thousand guesses. He was In the mule trade, and jour- 
neyed to the mountains of Aragon to buy donkey sires. 
He sought animals of fourteen hands and over, receiving 
£80 for a fine beast laid down in London, and £100 for 
something exceptional; but spoke of competition from 
Kentucky, where donkeys are now bred from the best 
strains of Spain. 



17% THIS WORLD OF OURS 

Later in the morning I reached Barcelona; where, to 
orient myself, I presently climbed Tibidabo, a hill 1750 
feet high, standing at the outskirts of this considerable 
city. Barcelona is the business centre of Spain, her 
largest port, and a place with a personality. My hotel 
opened on the Rambla, a street of the greatest anima- 
tion, its centre set apart for a flower market — which 
eclipsed Nice — and for the sale of caged birds. Just back 
from it stood the covered-in city markets, where a thou- 
sand women presided over the stalls, and not a man. 

Across the Rambla from here, yet hidden from its 
crowds, is a high old Gothic church. Enter it, as I did, 
straight from the sunlight, grope along the darkened 
nave, then throw your gaze up. Wide Gothic arching will 
begin to take shape high above you, set with windows 
of stained glass ; and I declare one of these, together with 
a rose window in the nearby cathedral, to be the finest 
flowers of the Gothic world. At the lower end of the 
Rambla, by the waterside, rises up a monument to Co- 
lumbus, two hundred feet high. His great figure, stand- 
ing upon it, dominates the spacious harbour, and is seen 
many miles out at sea. And well it may ; first and last, 
the old Admiral has brought many a ship into Barcelona. 

It was the feast of Corpus Christi; and in the bright 
sunshine of an afternoon I foimd myself, one of many 
thousands, entering the bull-ring. This was to be a 
great day. Special bulls of Andalusia were announced, a 
famous torero was to fight, and as I sat in the unshaded 
tiers, among the common people, I felt excitement gather 
in the air. An hour goes by. The vast plaza is crowded 
to suffocation. The band has played a martial air in the 
minor of Spain. The sellers of caramelos do a roaring 
trade. The sellers of lemonade and bottled beer are run 
off their legs. Hand-bills advertising a venereal remedy 
are thrown out by thousands. The band has played again. 



UP AND DOWN EUROPE 17S 

The hour is at hand, and in the small chapel behind the 
ring the principals now partake of the Holy Eucharist. 
A bugle call rings out ; and to music, the gay procession 
enters, passes before the president of the day, bows low, 
and goes out. The president rises in his box, takes up 
the key, and throws it into the ring. A moment later the 
cape adores — the wavers of the cloaks — have taken their 
stand, the mounted pic adores point their lances, and the 
gate opens. At first there is nothing to be seen. A 
moment or two later, a bull comes strolling down the 
passage and enters the ring. He is mottled in colour, and 
looks undersized; he stands quite still, as if dazed and 
sulky. At ten paces distant a picador sits astride his 
wretched hack. He is clad in black velvet, feathers stream 
in his hat, his legs are encased in metal, and as he poises 
his lance you think it is Don Q[uixote and his Rozinante 
facing the windmills. The bull paws the earth, then shoot- 
ing out an ugly glance, he charges. There is a shock. 
Man and horse fall to the ground, but the bull's horn 
has only glanced off the metal, and drawn no blood. The 
horse struggles to his feet. The picador is lifted again 
into the saddle. The bull, wounded by the lance, infuri- 
ated by the waving of bright cloaks, charges madly 
about the ring. Presently he sees horse and rider again. 
The picador is poising his lance as before. The horse, 
who cannot see for his blinkers, stands listening intently. 
The bull throws up his hind legs as if in frolic, then set- 
tling himself very low and square, he charges again. 
This time there is no shock. The group seems for some 
moments to be motionless. Then the picador slithers off 
on the far side, and walks away. The bull, standing back 
a yard, sulkily hangs his head. The horse has been gored 
in the main fore artery; a thick jet of blood is squirting 
out, and he turns his head to an extraordinary angle to 
watch it. His tail is wagging faster than any dog*s. In 



174 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

those seconds he is meditating his revenge. There Is no 
kick left in him, but he lays his nose against the bull's 
hide, and tries with an awful futility to bite. Futility 
indeed! Undersized or not, the bull lifts him three feet 
In the air, shakes him, and drops him dead in his own 
blood. 

A new horse is now ridden forward. Within ten sec- 
onds he has been gored in the belly, and his entrails come 
bulging through like a swelling balloon. His picador has 
vamoosed. The crowd, pleased with the quick work, 
take the bull into favour, who goes cavorting about, roar- 
ing with anger. Ignoring for once the waving cloaks, he 
suddenly charges a capeador, who only escapes by vault- 
ing the barrier. There is a roar of delight. No one 
takes further stock of the horse, who is careering round 
and round the ring, the balloon walloping at his side; 
attendants heading him oflf, he at last gallops through the 
exit, to be seen no more by men. 

The second phase now begins. No more horses are 
seen in the ring; but young bamderilleros, lithe and 
spangled, who must place two darts simultaneously in the 
bull, between the neck and the spine. This is a delicate 
and dangerous work, and the crowd, quick to respond, 
jump up In their places. The bull goes roaring and 
prancing. His back Is gay with the pennants which 
stream from the darts. To-day a little known handeril- 
lero acquits himself as a great artist. Again and again, 
as the bull charges, he skips neatly aside, cool and con- 
temptuous, and thrice places his darts in the flesh, exact 
to a hair's breadth. A crescendo of shouts greets him, 
and when he receives promotion to matador on the spot, 
there Is long and deafening applause. He is the hero of 
the day. The famous torero acclaims him, presents him 
with the red cloak and sword, and motions him, as espada, 
to the final encounter. This is the climax of the fight. 



UP AND DOWN EUROPE 175 

The other men leave the ring. He stands there alone 
with the bull, for a fight to the death. 

The vast audience, taut with excitement, crane over. 
He looks up at them and waves his hand. Standing in 
front of the president's box, he makes a courtly bow, 
dedicates this bull, and adjusting the red cloth, faces 
about. The bull sees him, and runs up to within six 
paces, where he stops short, pawing the ground. His 
eyes are glazed. He drips blood, and there is hell in his 
heart. Always from the comer of his eye he sees that 
red muleta. Now it is waved at him, now drawn across 
the ground, now coiled round the point of the matador's 
blade, who stands there challenging. The bull charges 
at last — and finds he has shot into space. He turns — 
and sees a laugh in the man's eyes. A roar has come 
from the people, and he looks up dazed into the sea of 
faces. His sight has nearly gone. He is weak from loss 
of blood. He is very weary; but he comes of a far- 
famed strain of fighters, and once more he squares him- 
self for the charge. The man squares himself too. Tak- 
ing a firm stand, he holds his rapier before him at arm's 
length, and points it straight between the horns. 

There is a quiver all around the ring, and the bull 
charges. The matador seems hardly to move. But his 
weapon has been so well and truly poised that the bull 
has spitted itself; the blade is seen sticking deep in its 
spine. This has been a thrust of thrusts, dead straight, a 
triumph of nerve and eye; and the bull just gives a cough, 
looks quietly round about once or twice, and falls dead. 

The great audience goes mad. Surging on the tiers, 
throwing thousands of hats in the air, crying loudly to 
heaven to witness this fight of fights, it raises a volume 
of sound that must reach to the Balearic Islands. The 
women wildly wave their shawls, their eyes glistening 
with the thrill of it. The men shout hoarsely, waving 



176 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

their arms aloft, still crying to the upper regions; many 
hats, together with cigars, purses, and a shower of coins 
have been thrown into the ring, and a number of youths, 
climbing the barrier, rush to the matador and embrace 
him. The president waves congratulations ; the band is 
seen to be playing a march of victory ; in the press box ten 
men are writing for dear life, and the great news is about 
to be flashed over Spain. 

The young fighter makes a triumphal progress round 
the ring. In accordance with custom, his step is now 
mincing, his manner grossly affected. He deigns to ac- 
cept a fat purse they press on him, but with a wave of 
the arm makes over all else that is showered down to the 
inferiors who follow in his train. Why should he not? 
That mottled bull, which the caparisoned mules now drag 
out, gave him his chance, and he took it. He is a god in 
Spain for the rest of his life. 

As I returned to the heart of the city, all the people of 
Barcelona were making for the Rambla, where an im- 
mense crowd was now standing. The splendid and stately 
religious procession of Corpus Christi was taking place. 
The church bells were tolling. Military bands, marching 
at intervals in the long parade, played slow and solemn 
music. High clerics moved past imder their canopies, 
blessing the crowd; holy images were carried behind 
them, and as they went by all the people sank to their 
knees, many of them calling loudly upcn the Virgin. 
There followed a lengthy train of the clergy, of choris- 
ters who chanted, of others who carried high, lighted 
tapers, of those carrying religious banners, of the mili- 
tary, and of the different religious orders of laymen, 
sedate and elderly, wearing evening dress, with rows of 
sacred medallions across their breasts. 

The procession moved slowly, between long halts, and 
took two hours to pass. What with those who marched. 



UP AND DOWN EUROPE 17T 

and those who knelt, and all the sacred concomitants, it 
had brought religious emotion to tnany thousands of 
people. 

In that fine view from the summit of Tibidabo, it is 
not only Barcelona and the Mediterranean you see. There 
is an extended outlook over Catalonia. At no great 
radius you may count as many as eighty villages, and 
you will especially note, some thirty miles inland, the 
solitary mass of Montserrat rising from the plain. This 
mountain has been a shrine, and the site of a monastery 
for over a thousand years. It was called "Monsalvat" 
— Holy Mountain — in mediaeval times, and became leg- 
endary as the resting place of the Holy Grail. You may 
now ascend to the monastery, which is become a school 
of sacred music, by a rack-and-pinion railway. It stands 
in a deep cleft, high up the mountain mass. Bold and 
fantastic rock formations lie around it, but in and about 
the cleft is a maze of pine trees, and thick undergrowth, 
and a mountain stream rushes down. Exploring these 
precincts, I came out on a great natural terrace of the 
mountain. Both above it and below there seemed a sheer 
face of rock; but here was a grassy and wooded ledge 
carpeted with wild flowers, and towards its farther end a 
natural grotto, where ferns were growing, and moisture 
dripped from the roof. The old monks, I saw, had led 
their water along here by a pipe. I pictured them, on 
mellow afternoons a thousand years ago, and on mellow 
afternoons down through the centuries, lying among the 
wild flowers as I now lay, with the wooded strip at my 
back, great stretches of Catalonia and Aragon beneath 
me, and in the far North the snowline of the Pyrenees. 

There is no happiness unalloyed. The alloy in mine, 
as I lay there on the high terrace of Montserrat, con- 
cerned Richard Wagner, and a matter of topography. I 



178 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

was a student at Stuttgart ; and a memorable journey to 
Bayreuth, to see Parsifal, had opened a new world to 
me. Anything which touched that would interest me all 
my life, and here was something touching it closely. Wag- 
ner laid the scene of Parsifal, which centres around the 
Knights of the Holy Grail, on "Monsalvat, among the 
Northern mountains of Gothic Spain." This was Mon- 
salvat. But I was realising that Wagner could never have 
been here, that the country he portrayed was legendary 
as the Grail itself. In my mind's eye I knew the Domain 
of the Grail very well indeed. I thought of the Castle 
of the Knights as set upon a mountain side, facing north 
— ^as it might be this nearby monastery ; but I also saw, 
in my mind, a rolling territory of many miles, park-like 
in places, but mostly forest, and set with deep lakes. I 
thought of Gurnemanz, in the days of his hermitage, liv- 
ing as far as forty miles from the castle, and of Kundry 
as coming from a remoter country still. Then there was 
the castle of Klingsor. Did it not lie on the Southern 
slopes, facing "Arabian" Spain, and at a considerable 
distance away? How was I to reconcile that stately 
Bayreuth territory, which my mind had since so embel- 
lished, with this place? How would Wagner himself 
have reconciled it? This mountain mass of Montserrat 
was a wild and truly romantic spot; but it was small in 
area, precipitous, not much like the spacious and affor- 
ested domain of the Grail than the Rambla of Barcelona. 
This castle in Spain had come tumbling down; and so 
I was sad. 

I have not been a second time to Bayreuth, but up and 
down Germany I saw great performances of Wagner. 
There was Tristan at Vienna, where, all things consid- 
ered, they have the best opera in the world. There was 
Meister singer in Dresden, which is only second to Vienna. 



UP AND DOWN EUROPE 179 

One summer week I went to the Prinz Regenten Theatre 
at Munich, for the Ring, and Siegfried took its place in 
my brain as the greatest of them all. Then I was in 
Wiesbaden, and on a certain day read that Der Fliegende 
Hollander would be sung that evening at Frankfort. It 
is a short journey there from Wiesbaden, and I steamed 
into the great Frankfort station at five o'clock; being 
mid-winter it was dark, and it was snowing heavily. I 
had spent days in this rich Jewish centre twenty-five years 
before, journeying to Stuttgart; but the brilliantly lit 
city I came into out of the dark, whose thronged streets 
I was now pacing, was one I had never seen before — I 
could have sworn it ! 

I found my way to the Frankfurter Hof. I would 
have a dinner meet for a great occasion, and ordered blue 
trout, a saddle of hare, and a vintage bottle of Graacher. 
Rich Jews were dining all around me, their women spark- 
ling with jewels; and outside it was snowing. I had 
hardly sipped a glass of the wonderful wine, when all 
the melodies of the opera broke loose in my head. This 
snow ! It was a very proper setting for the Dutchman, 
storm-tossed on the coast of the Baltic Sea. His haunt- 
ing cry rose; my blood ran cold as the overture devel-^ 
oped, and there came the crash of the thunder, the rise 
and fall of the storm. Now I was come to the song of 
Senta, which she sings in Bergen, and I had last heard 
in the forests of Ashanti. There, at the gold mines, had 
been a gramophone, and as we sat sipping our quinine be- 
fore dinner, so had she sung to us, and fire-flies had come 
out of the forest. 

I lived it over again at the crowded opera, among the 
rich and comfortable burghers, then stole out of Frank- 
fort in the dark, even as I had entered. It was midnight 
when I came to Wiesbaden, so heavily snowing that the 
station yard stood bare and lifeless. 



180 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

A letter came at this time from an old Transvaal friend 
that I should visit him in Darmstadt. We walked along 
the Bergstrasse, sampling the local wine of each village, 
through the extensive woods which lie about the capital 
and into the Grand Ducal forest, where we put up wild 
boar from their lair. One day walking in the forest, Von 
Hofmann said to me : "Would you like to see the death- 
mask of Shakespeare? It is in Darmstadt," 

I said, "Shakespeare's death-mask in Darmstadt? Of 
course." An hour later, from a quiet street, we entered 
the villa of Dr. Becker, and presently I stood before a 
plaster-cast, which lay on a black velvet cushion. 

There lived at Cologne once, the Count of Kesselstadt, 
a dignitary of the Roman Church, a great antiquarian, 
who, from one of his visits to England, returned with a 
gem. This was the well attested and only death-mask of 
the Bard of Avon, upon which, so long as the Count lived, 
he set the highest value. He died ; and while his collection 
became dispersed to the ends of Europe the death-mask 
disappeared. It was at last unearthed, in the forties of the 
last century, in an old junk shop in Mainz. Its discoverer, 
the grandfather Becker, tracing its history with love and 
care, won for it the recognition of British and German 
authorities; and since the family came to Darmstadt, it 
has reposed, prized above rubies, as the family heir- 
loom. 

The mask, which now held me magnetized, was that 
of a small — one might almost say a tiny — head, with a 
markedly sloping forehead, bald over the forehead, with 
a sort of Wellington nose, and a small imperial. But the 
forehead! Narrow across the eyes, receding, it yet 
opened out to a perfect dome, to one which, as you gazed, 
seemed to suggest immensity. It was wonderful, beauti- 
ful; and I stared at it perhaps half an hour. That this 
relic was the true death-mask of Shakespeare I did not 



UP AND DOWN EUROPE 181 

doubt; that it lay there in Darmstadt, and not in Strat- 
ford, made me sad.* 

If the East was revealed in a night's vigil off Ceylon, 
the glamour of music opened up Northern Europe to me. 
At the Tivoli pleasure garden, in Copenhagen, there is 
one of the finest string orchestras, and its playing of an 
item one summer night, to a boy of seventeen who lis- 
tened, set his mind agog. It was the Minuet of Boccher- 
ini, rendered in perfection. 

I did not find myself in Copenhagen again for many 
years; but again it was a summer's night, and this time, 
in a state of expectancy, I entered the famous garden. 
They were playing ''Ase's Death/' This was no light and 
airy melody of the Mediterranean, but the deep, sad 
music of the North, and these men of the North were 
just playing it with their soul. The great audience hung 
breathless upon the music — each one dying his own death, 
moving through forests to his burial, seeing the winters 
come, and snow upon his grave; and I, who stood there 
dead and buried with them, came in those moments ta 
my comprehension of Scandinavia. 

The underlying sadness of the Northland — it is not 
misery — does not come to the surface these days of 
summer; while they last, let us make for Norway and 
Sweden and Finland. As you pass up the mainland of 
Denmark you see it to be flat, a grazing land, a country 
of dairy farms with their immense byres ; rows of milch 
cows, of the Danish breed, stand tethered in the fields, 
groomed and blanketed, and there is everywhere a great 
making of hay. 

* When I returned to England, I called upon the first authority 
on Shakespeare; I said, "Do you know about the Kesselstadt mask?" 
"Yes. But I decided to reject it as not authentic." I said, "Have 
you seen it?" "No." "Will you come with me to Darmstadt and 
look at it?" "No. I have printed my opinion; I cannot recon- 
sider it." 



18a THIS WORLD OF OURS 

After crossing the Cattegat, you will want to linger in 
Gottenburg, Christiania, Bergen; they will seem to you 
cleaner, sweeter, more reasonably ordered than the cities 
you have lived in, and the lives of the people, too, more 
reasonably ordered. There is such leisureliness, such 
quiet comfort; the food is so good; it is so well cooked, 
so politely served. There are drives about the country- 
sides, revealing a wealth of old trees and wild flowers. 
There are city gardens where you may dine, where you 
may sit these long evenings, hearing fine music. Every- 
where there is a pure air, gracious, well-ordered people, 
a philosophy of life; but for the strange tongue they 
speak, this would be one's elysium. 

I sailed out of Bergen one evening by coastal steamer, 
heading North, and thereby passed into a region of 
fjords, girt with mountain and waterfall, where small 
communities dwell on the lowland patches, fishing, hay- 
making, supplying the summer tourists with lodgment and 
a courtesy beyond compare. Further North, we sailed 
inside a chain of islands, calling at the fishing village of 
Svolvaer in the Lofodens, several times a day heading 
far up a sound to some small settlement. The days had 
lengthened at Copenhagen. Last night I sat reading on 
deck at midnight, and this morning we cross the Arctic 
Circle. Lying here, upon a fjord, is the village of Mo, 
where I landed for an hour, and entering the woods, pres- 
ently lay down among wild flowers, fresher and more 
thickly growing than I had ever seen. At two o'clock 
the next morning, in the broad daylight, I landed at 
Narvik. Walking down the silent street there came two 
school girls of twelve years old, and up the silent street 
an elderly mechanic, who, passing, gravely saluted fem- 
ininity with raised hat. It seemed there were great gen- 
tlemen in the Arctic. 

In Swedish Lapland, not so far inland from Narvik, 



UP AND DOWN EUROPE 183 

are deposits of the finest iron in the world; and in this 
region too, you will see Lapps encamped, with their rein- 
deer, a nomadic and harmless tribe. From the iron mines 
and the arctic tundra, a railway took me in a day and a 
half, down through the never-ending forests, through the 
heart of Sweden, to Stockholm. 

And now, in this summer time, we are in the city 
of Europe. Not but that Stockholm has her winter 
charm: I have skated here, walked through the white 
forests, been to the Opera in snow-shoes, and give winter 
its due; but I know her in summer to be unmatched. 
Forests surround Stockholm. All about the city lie 
stretches of water, and you find she is half built upon 
islands, which extend, wild and wooded, down to the 
open Baltic. It is glorious to be sailing out of Stockholm 
on an evening. Thus have I sailed out for Gothland, 
that island far down the Baltic, coming there in the 
early morning. Several times, too, I have sailed at 
eventide for Finland. For hours, after supper, I have 
watched the vessel thread her way among a hundred 
wooded islands ; and sought my bed at midnight, between 
the freshest of sheets, noting the long twilight, the pure 
air, and the deep peace of these northern regions. 

By next afternoon, never having lost sight of islands, 
you reach Helsingfors, capital of Finland, another city 
surrounded by forests. Here you come across a people 
notably sad; and when you realise that their city is 
poor, and themselves drab looking, you feel that an 
illusion is gone. But do not judge hastily. This coun- 
try is a maze of forests and lakes, threaded by small 
steamers; and as the days pass, and you journey from 
lake to lake, or are driven through the forests, meeting 
the people in their homes, you will say that Finland is 
a lovable country, and the sad Finns a deeply feeling, 
enlightened people. There is real civilisation in these 



184 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

forests — just as there is real civilisation throughout 
Scandinavia. 

I have in these few pages but touched the fringe of the 
Europe I know; memorable days and scenes crowd my 
mind faster than I can set them down. There were those 
walks in the country behind Vigo. There was Cintra, 
lying among oaks; whence a road wound up the moim- 
tain to a Moorish fort, and still up, to a Moorish pal- 
ace built upon the crags — a palace of fairyland. There 
were afternoons in Seville, lying under oleanders in the 
gardens of the Alcazar, near Moorish fountains, all set 
about with tiles. In the evenings I sat in the pla^a of 
San Fernando, imder the palms, under the cloudless sky, 
and watched the women of Seville go past. There you 
see, as elsewhere in Spain, the slender Madonna type, 
and the thoroughly fat, stepping right masterfully, a 
gulf between them. Each evening, in the cool, some 
dozens of young girls collected here, and to the rhyth- 
mic snapping of castanets danced long and gracefully, 
dispersing at the stroke of eleven. 

In the witching month of October, upon a god-like 
afternoon, I lay on the sands of the Lido, over against 
Venice. As I entered my gondola, to return to the city, 
the air became strangely balmy, while the lagoons lay in 
a glassy calm. Presently the sun was setting. Over 
the water, I think from Malamocco, came the tolling of 
that deep bell — ^that sweetest toned bell in the world — 
and if ever the peace of God rested on earth, it rested 
at that moment. We were passing a small island. Upon 
the island stood an old barrack-like building, and as we 
glided by, in the twilight, a long wail, formless and 
ghastly, stole from it. Badly shocked, I raised myself 
from the cushions. "They are the furiosi/' said the gon- 
dolier, tapping his head. The great building was an 



UP AND DOWN EUROPE 185 

asylum — an asylum for the violently insane; the form- 
less and dreadful wail was their raising of the evening 
hymn. 

I sat on the cliffs at Capri, and while distant Vesuvius 
smoked, pondered over the Roman Catholic Church ; and 
again, beneath the cypresses at the Villa D'Este, almost 
within sight of St. Peter's dome, I thought of this: 
Here were Italy, Spain, Portugal and the rest, rich and 
fertile countries to the eye, yet deadly poor, and I asked 
myself the why and wherefore. Was it not the religion? 
In the Middle Ages these countries, obsessed by Roman- 
ism, locked up their money in cathedrals, and churches, 
and shrines, and monasteries, which yielded no return, 
and thereby diverted it from irrigation, and mill races, 
and reclamation of wastes, and forestry, and ships, and 
trading, and those channels where it would have re- 
turned a profit right down through the centuries. They 
also withdrew the best and most active brains from the 
state to become celibates — clergy and monks and nuns; 
so that to-day, in the natural flow of cause and effect, we 
see these states suffering from economic anaemia. 

The economies of Rome have been unsound. (Indeed 
I am authorised to state that God is tired of bricks and 
mortar; but contrite hearts are welcome as usual.) On 
the other hand, her missionaries to the heathen — or to be 
exact, the Jesuit missionaries in particular — are the best 
I have known; in some ways I think of them as the 
salt of the earth. One may picture them as tall, bearded 
men, of a full habit — Belgians, Frenchmen, Alsatians 
mostly, speaking a limpid French — and I see them in sun 
helmet and dustcoat, or a suit no longer white, striding 
the torrid roads of Africa, India or China, regardless 
of fever and heat. These are highly educated, subtle 
men, masters, too, of several crafts, which they teach 
thoroughly, who, pledged by the solemnest of vows, go 



186 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

out eagerly to their labours, and settle down there for 
life. 

It is the fate of foreign missions to achieve less than 
they think. Let it at least be said the Jesuits turn a 
native into a practical craftsman, even if he remain a 
poorish Christian. 

It is but a short journey from Venice into the pleas- 
ant country of Austria. Passing slowly up the valley of 
Tyrol, you see unfold swiftly running river, brown- 
roofed, immemorial villages, well-kept vineyards and 
orchards; upon the hillsides peasants are stacking their 
hay; higher up, many milch cows are grazing, and the 
sound of their bells is borne to you; far up the slopes 
you see where the forests begin. The forests of Austria 
are her glory. They belong to the state, or to the 
great territorial magnates, and in their depths stand 
castles and shooting boxes. Wild boar lurk in these, and 
deer abound; on the flat lands between Salzburg and 
Vienna, after ploughing, I have counted hares by the 
hundred, and an Austrian nobleman, issuing with his 
guests from his castle, used to shoot as many as a thou- 
sand in a day. With it all, the chase in this joyous 
country was not after these. Each Austrian of leisure, 
were he nobleman, army officer, or bourgeois, spent his 
life running after women, and for many years thinking 
of little else under the sun. This characteristic accounts 
for a certain national futility — as we measure futility. 
But I am not prepared to moralise. Austrian women are 
most alluring; Austrian men may be exceedingly wise 
in their generation. 

As you travel Northward and Eastward, the forests 
pass. Here is Hungary, and we stand at the fringe 
of that food belt which covers Eastern Europe. The 
land is a plain. The soil is black and deep and renowned 



UP AND DOWN EUROPE 187 

for its wheat. Order yourself a meal at some country 
inn, and you will find the bread the whitest and most 
delicious you have ever eaten. The soil is richest in 
Hungary; but these plains, leaping the barrier of the 
Carpathians, extend Northward into Poland, a food 
producing country of magnitude. I have passed through 
Poland when it seemed one field from end to end — a 
mosaic of wheat and oats and hay and tares and beets 
and sunflowers — and round about the smiling home- 
steads such a wealth of fat geese, that three thousand 
were daily driven across the frontier, for marketing in 
Germany. 

Eastward, the food growing belt extends through 
much of Roumania; it covers Bessarabia, and much of 
the Ukraine; from the heights at Odessa I looked over 
the wheat plain lying North of the Black Sea. 

Somewhere between the forests and the wheat plains, 
drawing, it may be, inspiration from each, a stream of 
genius flows through Central Europe. It is the genius of 
music, the genius, in particular, of the violin. The 
stream wells out strongly in Poland, flows swift and deep 
through Bohemia, and courses through the slavic belt 
into Hungary. Somewhere east of Budapest it loses 
itself. Throughout Roumania, a thousand tsigane 
fiddlers seek to recreate it; furiously they draw their 
bows, stamp the feet, raise the eyes to heaven; but 
genius is not in their strings. 

Poles, Czech, Slav, Magyar, Jew blend their music in 
this stream. It has given to the world Chopin, Mosz- 
kowski, Dvorak, Liszt, Rubinstein; a succession of 
prodigies; many virtuosi; many great singers; above all 
it is forever replenishing the world's stock of talented 
violinists — nature's violinists, hundreds and hundreds of 
them, who spring to life in this belt as thrushes spring 
to life in an English coppice. 



188 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

An eminent metallurgist and myself, inspecting gold 
mines in Transylvania, were hailed in the market place 
of Verespatak. A fine and courtly Hungarian, the 
leading man of the district, saluting us, announced that 
we were his guests. "Gentlemen," he said in German, 
"you will find me poor company. My dear wife, the 
apple of my eye, is dead these nine months, since when 
I have had little pleasure in life. While she lived, I 
was a great man for the ladies ; but will you believe me, 
I have not even cared to go with a woman since she 
died. But you shall eat well, and drink our Hungarian 
wine, and my cook shall make you coffee such as you 
have never tasted." 

About the market place of the small hill town, peas- 
ants in their rough sheepskin coats stood, each with a 
lambkin or two, the table delicacy of these regions. 
With a wave of the arm our host indicated his choice; 
which was despatched on the spot, and the carcase, to- 
gether with other fresh foods, sent homewards. We were 
now guided to the mining deposits of Verespatak — hills 
of gold-bearing rock, quarried and honeycombed to a 
degree — and known to have been mined since the days 
of the Roman Empire. These are still worked, yielding 
a bare profit; and we drove down the valley, where, in 
small batteries belonging to the miners themselves, and 
driven by rude water-wheels, two thousand wooden 
stamps were pounding the ore. 

When we reached our host's house, we found it in 
charge of a peasant couple, man and wife, elderly, ex- 
tremely fat and illiterate, but knowing the Austrian 
cooking, and the occasion, I had no fears. We sat down 
to a memorable dinner, gorging from a whole roasted 
lamb, and other choicely cooked foods, and gulping 
draughts of Hungarian wine. At length, when we ate 
no more, the proud boast of the Hungarian recurred to 



UP AND DOWN EUROPE 189 

me, and "With reference to that coffee?" I murmured. 
As I spoke, the immense old woman entered, bearing long 
glasses of coffee and milk, prepared God alone knows 
how. I had drunk the finest coffees of the world, pre- 
pared by master hands, yet this excelled them all; it was 
the elixir of life. I was translated. Tears came to 
my palate. I raised my long glass to my host, and shook 
him by the hand. Here was such perfection as to call 
for homage, and my arm assayed to encircle an elephan- 
tine waist. ''Der Englander hat mich gekusstT shrieked 
the delighted fat woman to her spouse. 

Our host now prayed us to visit his copper "prospect** 
in the mountains, an hour*s drive distant. At the end, 
there was a hill to cHmb on foot. Its near slope, tree- 
less, lay in the warm afternoon sun, all green with the 
greenness of April, yet when we dropped over the crest, 
suddenly the sun was gone, three feet of snow lay on 
the ground, and we entered a dark and steep forest of 
pines. Here lay the ^'prospect," and lighting our can- 
dles, we entered the tunnel. It took me just ten seconds 
to value that mine; after a perfunctory interval, our 
kindly Hungarian babbling loudly of his ^'bonanza,*' I 
performed on him the unhappy despatch. 

We set out from Verespatak at the twilight, clattering 
down the valley of the wooden stamp mills in a barouche. 
A long drive lay ahead, and in the darkness, after a 
day of vivid enjoyment, the eminent metallurgist and 
myself sang the Yeoman of the Guard from beginning to 
end. A telegram had been despatched about us, and at 
our journey's end we were received in state at the inn. 

As we supped, a band of strolling tzigane, hearing of 
our presence, entered the inn, and playing long and fren- 
ziedly, were rewarded with gold. The good looking 
stuhenmadchen, seated between us, plied our glasses the 
while, and midnight found us as mellow as could be. 



190 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

Out of Fiume, that port on the Adriatic, steamers sail 
each day for the coast of Dalmatia. Some hundreds of 
miles down this coast, inside a mountain-locked harbour, 
is the town of Cattaro, whence I ascended by a remark- 
able road to the mountain tops, 4,000 feet high. Upon 
these tops lies Montenegro. A sea of rocky hills stretches 
before you; at each twist and turn of the road there 
opens out a tiny valley, with perhaps an acre of green 
grass, a hungry potato patch, a stone built hovel, through 
whose thatch there comes oozing peat smoke, and pigs 
lying about the door — for all the world like the poorest 
stretches of Ireland. 

The inhabitants of this land will surprise you. The 
men seem mostly six feet high, are dark for choice, and 
bear themselves haughtily. Each one wears the zouave, 
which is often red, with loose knickers, and thick stock- 
ings to the knees ; each one carries his rifle, and a filled 
bandolier is slung across his chest. The women seem 
to be all five feet ten ; they too wear the red zouave, and 
are of a superb carriage. Some are dark, others of a 
radiant fairness. Here is a beauty whose hair hangs in 
thick plaits; and you could just twine it round your 
neck, and half strangle yourself, were it not for that 
man over there with a rifle, and a hundred cartridges. 
For several hours yet you drive through these wastes, 
until a larger valley is reached, and here stands the cap^ 
ital, Cettinge. As I walked down the village street — 
for Cettinge is no more than a large village — I mused 
upon the poverty of this State, the desolation of these 
mountains, the meagreness of this little spot. So keenly 
did I realise its meagreness, that when a family coach, 
drawn by two stout horses, upon whose box seat sat two 
retainers in their red zouaves, came ambling up the 
street, I suffered a mild shock. A moment later I had 
raised my hat. The stout, elderly King and Queen — he 



UP AND DOWN EUROPE 191 

in his little flat cap, red vest, and knickers like all the 
rest — were taking their afternoon drive. The Montene- 
grins, primitive and highly unstable like all the Balkans, 
are the handsomest race in the world. When I went into 
Servia, whose people are of the same blood, I saw splen- 
did individuals too; but these lowlanders, better fed 
and better sheltered though they be, are not comparable 
with the Montenegrins. Nor do these racial looks pass 
over the frontier of Bulgaria. 

I came to a city where, at six o'clock in the morning, 
the sun shone hotly into my room. By seven, it seemed 
to be high noon, vibrating heat and sunlight; I pressed 
the bell, and a swarthy person took my well considered 
order for breakfast. I was in Athens. It was the hot 
season, and I had this — one of the best of hotels — nearly 
to myself. My room overlooked the central square, 
and the rising ground where stood the palace. The 
waiter, returning, now set before me a classic meal. 
There was coffee, made with the strength of Brazil, and 
the fragrance of Costa Rica; rolls of yesterday's baking, 
with fresh butter; and the thick, strained honey of 
Mount Hymettus, flavoured from the wild thyme, than 
which there is none finer. 

I presently set out to see Athens. Half a mile away, 
rising at the city's outskirts, is the Acropolis. Upon it 
stands the Parthenon, and lesser temples, and for a mile 
around rise many famous monuments of antiquity. On 
a nearby slope are hewn rock dwellings, among them 
a cave that was the prison of Socrates; and here the 
wisest of men drank the cup of hemlock. From the 
Acropolis, Athens lies spread out in the bright sunshine 
— 3i city of whitewash, not unlovely, girt too with groves 
of trees ; but the enveloping Attic plain, and the distant 
mountains are now dry and arid. 



192 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

And on that afternoon I drove. My way lay across 
the arid plain; and not far from the city, by a grove of 
olive trees, I halted awhile. Here had lived Akademus, 
owner of this land, which he presently sold for a scholas- 
tic site to one Plato, and so perpetuated his name to all 
generations. Across the plain you now see the bay of 
the Peirssus, port of Athens, and as you drive onward, 
another bay, Salamis, where the Greek and Persian fleets 
fought for the mastery of the seas. After several hours' 
driving, temple ruins are seen upon the rising ground, 
and you have arrived at the sacred site of the Eleusinian 
mysteries. As you return across the plain, the great heat 
of the day has passed, the dense blue faded from the 
sky. Soon a balm falls upon the air, the light softens 
swiftly, and you realise that the violet encirclement of 
Athens, her evening glory from time immemorial, is 
descending. Strangely violet becomes now the outline 
of the Acropolis, with its temples, the long slope of 
Hymettus, the more distant Mount of Pentelicus, where 
they quarry the marble; violet every ridge and horizon, 
and the wide surface of the Attic plain. Thus you drive 
into enchantment, into the peace that is past understand- 
ing; and when the day fades, and night falls, you will 
say with the dying Socrates, "I await immortality or 
annihilation with a mind equally untroubled and at rest." 



CHAPTER XII 

ARCHANGEL TO ASTRACHAN 

One month of July there came the thought: **This 
summer I must sail down the Volga;" and after study- 
ing the map I said : "I shall cross Russia from Archangel 
to Astrachan.'* A steamer was leaving Leith upon a 
voyage to Iceland and Spitzbergen. Afterwards, she 
could land me at Hammerfest, and I should reach Arch- 
angel by way of the Murman Coast. This was right as 
could be, and I set out for Edinburgh. In Berwickshire 
I halted awhile, making for a certain spot in the Lam- 
mermoor Hills. I had not been in my own country for 
ten years. I had not been in these parts, where I 
roamed so often as a boy, in a far longer time. 

And here I was, lying out on the heather once more! 
I lay on Rawburn, above Evelaw. The sun shone. The 
heather was dry. The patches of bell-heather glowed 
with a deeper colour, as I remembered they used to glow. 
The black-faced sheep still viewed one in affright. The 
Twinlaw Cairns still rose on their solitary mounts. But 
it was the calling of grouse all around me — the two 
sharp cries, then the mirthless cadence dying away — 
which carried me really back. I remembered just such an 
afternoon nearly thirty years before. It was a Sunday, 
and I was bound two miles across the moor, to take 
tea with a shepherd. I had lain down at this very spot, 
and while the grouse called, had taken stock of the 
heavens and the earth — especially of how a boy might 
encompass the earth; and as the tea hour loomed I had 

193 



194 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

gone on again, heading as for Longformacus. The 
old shepherd, a man of saintly character, had sat read- 
ing his Bible. His bonnet and plaid hung behind the 
door. His collies lay under the family bed. The guid- 
wife, careful and troubled, had laid the table. She set 
thereon the ornate company teapot, the big three- 
cornered scones — Saturday's baking on the griddle — a 
Selkirk bannock, her own cream and butter, cheese, and 
a skep of heather-honey, and when the saintly shepherd 
had asked a blessing, we fell to. But the shepherd and 
his wife were dead — these many years . . . and I 
the most travelled man in Scotland . . . and the 
grouse were calling — calling. . . . Had all our Scotch 
folk lain out on the heather and spun their web? 
There were such thousands of them abroad — up and 
down the earth! Everywhere I had found just ten times 
as many as their proportion. No spot was too remote. 
No new settlement seemed to go forward without them. 
I thought proudly of all the Scotch in the East. How 
Scottish the Indian Civil Service! And the Indian 
Army! How entirely Scotch, from the top of Ochter- 
lony's Montiment, downward, the City of Calcutta! 
Burma was but an annex of Glasgow, and the planta- 
tions of India and Ceylon the close preserve of the 
Highlands. Scotsmen cut the teak in Siam, did the big- 
gest trading in China; every steamer East of Suez car- 
ried Scotch engineers, every bank and counting-house 
a Scotch manager and staff ; and a thousand remote con- 
cerns, trusting their all to some proved man of balance, 
had installed a Scotsman in control. And as the Scotch 
were in the East, so were they in the North, and the 
South, and the West — a tower of strength to the British 
people. I shall be just, though it be to my own despite. 
We do not throw up the very greatest of the race : New- 
ton, Shakespeare, Cromwell, Darwin, Nelson, Milton, 



ARCHANGEL TO ASTRACHAN 195 

Bacon, Clive, Harvey, were Englishmen. Nor do we 
throw up so talented an average as the Jews. Our 
national vice is strong drink, and many succumb ; but by 
proved standards the Scotch are trustworthy, and of 
balanced ability, before all the races of men. 

And so I presently sailed from Leith, and came next 
day to Kirkwall, in the Orkney Islands. From the roof 
of the parish church of St. Magnus, a building of great 
age, one viewed a town of blue-grey stone, lying at the 
head of an arm of the sea, and a treeless country of tilled 
farms. These Arcadian Scotch traced back to the Norse. 
Their faces expressed individuality. Their gravestones, 
clustered about this church, expressed it after their 
death. One read: "Burial ground of James Scarth of 
Cursiter," "Family tomb of the Marwicks of Saviskail," 
while a stone specified that Jane, wife of a Kirkwall 
draper, had died upon a certain Monday, her draper fol- 
lowing her two years later, upon a Wednesday — all pre- 
cise data for resurrection mom. Also, I paid sixpence to 
see the church. 

Next morning we lay off another small town at the end 
of an arm — off Thorshaven, in the Faroe Islands, the an- 
cient dependency of Denmark. Here it was treeless too, 
but steep and rocky ; wooden houses were perched about 
the rocks, and a stream rushed steeply down the street. 
Blond islanders stood about the wharf; they looked 
strangely pale and melancholy, and one saw in a flash 
what the stormy sea, and much rain, and lonely winters, 
and eternal diet of fish made of men. A rush of fair- 
haired children came out of the school, happy and care- 
less; but you knew that later on they must tread the 
track of their pale and buffeted elders. The industries 
of Faroe are whaling, cod-fishing — on all sides you see 
strings of fish set out for drying — and the collecting of 



196 THIS Y\^ORLD OF OURS 

birds' eggs and feathers ; save for poorish potato patches 
I saw no agriculture, nor any sheep upon the stony hills. 
I walked up from Thorshaven on to a barren moorland. 
Some peat carriers, descending with their loads, passed 
me; save for them, I was alone with the whistling cur- 
lews and the gathering rainclouds. 

We steamed out of Thorshaven, pavSsing among other 
islands of the group. Evening of the next day found 
us in sight of the mountains of Iceland. The sea lay 
strangely calm, the sun was warm, the air mellow; so 
perfect an evening was but seldom seen in these parts. 
Thousands of sea-birds, mostly eider duck, rested on the 
water, flying silently away at our approach. A couple 
of trawlers steamed homeward with their catch. The 
sun set at a quarter past ten; wheh I sought my berth, 
at half past eleven, it was still daylight. By morning 
we were anchored in the bay of Reykjavik, where Ice- 
land's capital, with its 8,000 people, lay by the sea. The 
barren, lava-strewn country behind it rose to the inte- 
rior, where snow-capped mountain ranges loomed, and 
Hecla, the smoking volcano; but it seemed a grassless 
waste, and nowhere was there vestige of a tree. 

Landing, I again found myself among the Norse — 
blond people, intelligent rather than good-looking, a 
resemblance running through all. The melancholy cast 
was fainter here. The wooden houses were brightly 
painted ; I passed by the Government buildings, the Par- 
liament House of Iceland, a museum, and statues to 
Thorwaldsen and Sigurdsen, natives of the island. The 
town was enjoying its brief summer. Flags were flying. 
Pony races were advertised for that afternoon, and for 
the next day a concert, where I was to hear the finest 
singing of folk songs. One saw no gardens, but behind 
each closed window geraniums and begonias blossomed; 



ARCHANGEL TO ASTRACHAN 197 

I wondered if the windows made a showing through the 
long winter. Winter days and evenings in Iceland were 
times of study. This remote people were not only vora- 
cious readers, but students and thinkers, many of them 
grounded in science. Nor were they of yesterday. This 
was the kingdom of Thule, with its sagas, its poets and 
explorers, its history that stretched back for a thousand 
years. 

Outside the town, cattle fed on the sparse pasture. 
A mile beyond, smoke was rising from the hot springs, 
where the washerwomen of Reykjavik were assembled; 
the lonely track to the interior led by here, and trains 
of shaggy ponies passed, laden with their packs. Look- 
ing seawards from here, I saw on a promontory the 
lazaretto ; there were lepers in Iceland. 

Continuing her voyage, the vessel sailed up the Isa 
Fjord, between frowning cliffs; then to the open sea 
again, passing a steam whaler, harpoon fitted, at whose 
side hung a Whale, white and corrugated. A fiery 
red sunset lay upon the water till half -past eleven. Next 
morning we entered a sheltered fjord, anchoring before 
Akureyri, the second town of Iceland, with 2,000 inhabi- 
tants, where, under the hills, long grass grew, and the 
haymakers were out. 

Quitting Iceland now, heading northeast, we crossed 
a few miles out the Arctic Circle. A day later, in bitter 
weather, we sailed by uninhabited Jan Meyen — a moun- 
tainous island of rock, snow, and ice, stern and forbid- 
ding, and rarely seen for fog ; many seabirds were flying 
under the cliffs, whilst" the heights, as I watched, became 
hidden in the drifting snow. It was growing ever colder. 
There came another cloudless day, and that midnight the 
sun shone; but a deep and pervading loneliness now lay 
over the sea. Next evening we anchored in Smerenberg 
Bay, Spitzbergen. 



198 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

This was No-Man's Land. We lay near the north 
end of Spitzbergen, just on the eightieth degree, six hun- 
dred miles from the Pole. Only bare mountains, glaciers 
and snowfields met the eye, and one marvelled that even 
for these few weeks — Gulf Stream or no Gulf Stream^ — 
a vessel could penetrate so far and not meet the sea 
of ice. 

Into these lonely bays, in long ago summers, came 
British, French and Dutch whalers, who, finding whales 
in plenty, had there fought each other for the grounds. 
Many had fallen, and received rude burial upon these 
shores. In Magdalena Bay, three hundred years ago this 
very simimer, British whalers had fought the ships of 
the Noordsche Maatschappij, of Amsterdam; and many 
Dutch had been killed. 

I landed in Magdalena Bay. There grew, beyond its 
rocky strand, patches of a yellowish moss — the only 
vegetation. At a short distance rose the mountains, with 
their ice-fields, and across the fjord the vertical cliffs of 
glaciers, blue and veined, over which flowed cascades 
from the melting ice, sparkling as they fell. And on the 
strand, all about me, lay the bones of the Dead Dutch- 
men. One saw they had been buried in boxes, very shal- 
low, and that the storms of the centuries had cast them 
up to bleach. 

The sun had shone; but all in a moment, as I stood 
alone there, a dense fog blew up, and wrapped itself 
thickly round me. The distant steamer vanished. The 
landscape was blotted out. I could not see ten yards. 
A moment more, and I could see nothing at all. With 
it came such a bitter cold as chilled to the marrow ; heav- 
ily wrapped as I was, I stood there benumbed, peering 
all about. Somewhere in the fog a shot was fired, and 
then many shots ; they were the glaciers cracking, a mile 
away. Dreadful groans reached me, echoing and re- 



ARCHANGEL TO ASTRACHAN 199 

echoing, as the mountain masses of ice met and closed 
with one another. The breeze freshened; the cold be- 
came intense; the dense fog stung my eyes and my nos- 
trils. Then up the fjord, between the cliffs, came a great 
gust, and borne upon it a strange volume of sound. It 
may have been the sighing and whistling of the wind, 
the shots and groans reverberating from cliff to cliff, 
but to me, who stood there as good as blind, it was a 
great singing. And indeed, I knew what it was ! In my 
hand I held a skull; bones lay at my feet; it was the 
Dutch whalers, singing in the *'Last Chantey.'* 

Loud sang the souls of those dead and bleaching 
Hollanders, 

"Don't you forget us, Lord! 
We're the Noordsche Maatschappij ; 
We've been lying up at '80' 
Stark on the tundra, Matey, 
Three hundred years come Michaelmas — 
And we never scorned the Sea!" 

The wind changed after a while. The fog lifted. The 
sun shone, and the glaciers and icefields sparkled once 
more. I looked about me almost fearfully. I looked 
again and again; but of those who had sung in the fog 
I could see no vestige. Replacing the skull on the 
ground, I started to walk to the boat. 

Hammerfest — a small wooden town, on a sheltered 
harbour — lay at the base of steep hills. A centre of the 
fishing, its w^arehouses were in these weeks filled with 
dried cod, which a number of Russian schooners from 
Archangel were here to carry away. In the hills above 
the town pours a torrent which never freezes. This had 
been harnessed ; and at each few yards in the streets pow- 
erful arc lights hung, making Hammerfest the best lit 
spot in Europe. Now, in the unceasing daylight, I was 



200 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

not to see it lit, but I conjured up those months of the 
unending night. I thought of fishermen tossing out 
there in the bitter cold, of some great haul in the dark, 
of laden boats groping for port, of their suddenly round- 
ing yon black headland, and sighting the little town 
ablaze with light. 

Each January, a great fishing fleet assembles off the 
Lofoden Islands, where fifteen to twenty thousand men 
cast their nets in the continuous darkness. Later in the 
season they follow the fish — which are mostly cod, with 
haddock and halibut — tO' the North, passing Tromso, 
Hammerfest, and the North Cape, and by April and May, 
when the days are already long, are fishing the grounds 
to the northeast of Norway. The village of Vardo then 
becomes headquarters. This little place, which I had now 
reached by a coastal boat, handles in those months vast 
quantities of fish. The season was now over, and the 
fleet dispersed ; but the take had been sixty-five thousand 
tons, and Vardo had handled the greater part. In the 
main street lay a pile of cods' heads ; ten feet high, and 
many yards in length, it filled the village with a dread- 
ful stench. On the wharf, they worked upon a mass of 
cods' livers, expressing their oil; and the fresh, cloying 
effluvium from these was no less dreadful. Nearby, 
Russian fishers had cut open a huge fish for salting; it 
was such a halibut as I had never seen. I recalled that 
when Captain Cook explored the Northern Pacific, his 
men hauled up a fish of 254 pounds. But here, in 
Vardo, they have brought in halibut up to 300 kilos, 
and have known such a fish, from its markings, to be 
ninety years old. 

A little Russian steamer I had counted on, was now 
loaded and due to sail; at two in the morning we put 
out to sea. The voyage to Archangel — along the Mur- 



ARCHANGEL TO ASTRACHAN 201 

man Coast of Northern Russia, and down the White 
Sea — took five days. The Murman, rising in low gran- 
ite hills, proved bare and treeless, and save for fishing 
settlements in the more sheltered bays, uninhabited. At 
these we would call, taking aboard their dried fish, taking 
up or setting down rough seafaring men. One larger 
settlement there was — Alexandrovsk ; whence the 
steamer sailed up a fjord to Pola, and returned to Alex- 
androvsk for a couple of hours. Hardly had we an- 
chored, when a row-boat put off from the shore, and its 
occupants, two young men and a young woman, stepped 
up the gangway. They carried a pile of music, and 
without a word descended to the saloon, opened the 
piano, and played Grieg, passing then to Liszt and 
Tschaikowsky. The men were unshorn, and uncouthly 
dressed, but their faces were intelligent, they played 
with talent, and their eyes flashed to the music. The 
young woman, dark and slender, wore a rude grey cor- 
duroy; her face, as she sat listening, expressed an ex- 
traordinary understanding. They played until the 
steamer was about to sail, then, collecting their music, 
took to their boat and rowed away. There was a bio- 
logical station at Alexandrovsk, and attached to it a 
highly educated staff; but in the whole settlement only 
one piano. They told me musicians came aboard the 
steamer each time she lay there. 

Next morning, on deck, a man stood chained to a 
winch, heavily fettered. Catching my eye upon him, he 
seemed to go mad, cursing me with terrible Russian 
oaths, and relapsing into a stupor. A fisherman, one of 
the deck passengers, he had become drunk and disor- 
derly, and was chained up without any ceremony. He 
half hung there now in the cold wind — fainting, the 
tousled hair shot with grey, the beard blown across the 
cut face, misery and stupefaction in all his bearing. If 



202 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

Holy Russia were not careful, she would be losing this 
man's soul. 

Steaming south, into the White Sea, it was calm and 
sunny. When we crossed to the east shore, an immense 
though stunted forest covered the country. Several 
steamers sailed outwards, laden to the decks with timber. 
The sea narrowed. Soon we passed between the wooded 
banks of the Dwina River. As we steamed up, masses 
of cut logs appeared on the banks, and in clearings of 
the forest, for mile after mile, stood saw mills. Before 
each was a wharf, and at many wharves steamers were 
loading; they say a thousand cargoes of timber go out 
from the Dwina each summer. Now log rafts came 
floating down, an acre or more in area. Then came 
heavy rowing boats, a dozen or more, laden with ship's 
stores; in each, an old woman steered, while four pow- 
erful young ones pulled at the oars. The blue and green 
domes of churches now appeared above the forest, and 
presently we sighted the low-lying town of Archangel. 
In pouring rain the steamer tied up at her wharf. Across 
the river from Archangel starts the narrow-gauge rail- 
road to the South, and my train went out in the early 
afternoon. It still rained heavily. For hours nothing 
was to be seen but the interminable forest of birch and 
fir. A Khirghiz family, and a Jew, sharing my com- 
partment, made themselves tea, and slept ; again making 
tea, they turned in for the night, and I, wearied with the 
rain and the forest and the slow limibering of the train, 
presently followed. 

Next morning the sun shone. There were numerous 
clearings in the forest, and peasants in their red tunics 
— the women barefooted and using the scythe — were 
making hay. The forest disappeared; the country be- 
came settled. Towards afternoon I changed trains at 



ARCHANGEL TO ASTRACHAN 203 

Wologda, and the same evening reached Yaroslavl, on 
the Volga, 525 miles south from Archangel. 

The Volga, in summer, is a great waterway. From 
Yaroslavl, where I boarded a passenger boat, to the 
river's mouth, was seventeen hundred miles; but it is 
navigable for full two thousand. One may call this 
river's width, through the heart of Russia, five hundred 
yards, and thirty-nine towns and a thousand villages lie 
upon its banks. The right bank was always the higher, 
rising often to two hundred feet; where, if it were not 
the forest, might be perched a village, or a solitary 
church. The lower, left bank gave a far view over the 
plain; which changed from tilled land to pasture, and 
pasture to forest, as we swept steadily by. Numerous 
beacons stood on the banks, and lines of buoys marked 
the shallower water; the whole of these being lit up at 
night. 

By the month of November, this great waterway 
would be frozen again for the winter, but now the 
stream of traffic was interminable. Here, steaming up- 
river, comes a fine passenger boat. Following her comes 
a big tank steamer, carrying petroleum from Baku, or 
some other well on the shore of the Caspian. Here is a 
cargo carrier from Astrachan; she is loaded with wool 
from Turkestan, with cotton from the oasis of Merv, 
with fish products from near the river's mouth, and with 
Siberian goods from Samara. Now we pass a big raft 
of logs — as on the Dwina; it is downward bound, and 
is pulled by a tug. Here is another oil boat; a cargo of 
grain; a cargo of building stone; a down-river passenger 
carrier; and if you take stock an hour hence, you will 
see a like procession go past again. 

This is the second day out. We are come to the junc- 
tion of the Oka River with the Volga, and below the 



W4< THIS WORLD OF OURS 

junction, on the high right bank, stands the city of 
Nizhni-Novgorod. It is the time of the great fair, and 
I shall stay here a day or so; entering a droshky I am 
taken up the hill at a hand-gallop. 

A bridge of boats crossed from Nizhni to the fair. 
But there, disillusion! One had heard it said, **The 
Siberian Railway has killed the Fair," and had gone his 
unthinking way; I was now to realise the Siberian Rail- 
way had killed the fair: not the business, that remains 
quite immense. But at Nizhni to-day two merchants 
meet across a glass of tea, and a million roubles of pic- 
turesque goods never see the fair at all. Where were 
the caravans of brick tea, carried on yaks ? Where were 
the splendid and costly Siberian furs? Where were the 
bales of lambskins from Bokhara — the finest Astra- 
chans? Where were the Persian carpets from Tabriz, 
the Persian turquoises from Bujnurd — one and all at- 
tended by their owners in appropriate costume ? Where, 
if it came to that, were the performing bears; the per- 
sons in top boots and velveteen, who sprang into the air, 
or folded their arms and danced on their haunches; 
the folk singers and their balalaika orchestras — where 
were any at all of the old concomitants? I saw none. 
I certainly saw black-coated merchants from Moscow, 
and their bales of factory goods; I was importuned to 
buy trifles stamped with "A present from Nizhni"; I 
could even have had my photo in miniature, or my name 
upon a hundred visiting cards. I did actually dine in one 
of their restaurants, to the music of a military band; but 
for me the most famous fair in the world had ceased 
to exist. 

Two days later — a Sunday — aboard a passenger boat, 
oil-driven, I journeyed on. The air was balmy. The 
river flowed calm as a mirror. By sundown we were 
passing through a forest region, when, of a sudden, 



ARCHANGEL TO ASTRACHAN 205 

splendid singing was heard, and I saw, standing together 
on the lower deck beside the oil engine, the mechanics, 
the crew, and a number of the deck passengers. Their 
hair and their beards were brushed, each man wore a 
clean red tunic, and as they stood reverently before an 
ikon, they sang a number of hymns. In a group of 
Russian peasants at their devotions, brushed and washed, 
I always envisage a composite Jesus Christ. Russia is 
full of such physical Jesuses. Amongst these peasants 
too, crude and superstitious as so many are, there are 
men who exude His Essence as no other men do; they 
are the last guardians of the Jesus tradition. Should 
a Christ be born in these our days, to regenerate a far- 
gone humanity. He will be a mmijik. 

After sunrise next morning, when the mist had lifted, 
I beheld in the distance a city. It lay a few versts from 
the river, on rising ground, and against the horizon rose 
the domes of many magnificent churches. This was the 
holy city of Kazan, one time capital of the Mahomedan 
Tatars, still inhabited by many; and I supposed these 
splendid domes had not risen there fortuitous, but as 
the weighed and calculated policy of the Orthodox Greek 
Church. At the landing stage for the city they were 
selling watermelons, and for an inconsiderable sum I 
bought myself an immense comb of honey. Next day we 
came to Samara, where the Volga reaches furthest East, 
and an hour or two below the town sailed under the 
great Samara railway bridge. 

Twice, journeying Europewards from the East, I had 
crossed this bridge. I had crossed it coming from 
Siberia — from the mines. They have mined alluvial 
gravels in Siberia for one hundred and fifty years; but 
it is rather as a food belt, perhaps the vastest of all, 
that I think of this country. I conceive Siberia, for food 



206 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

production, as a belt three hundred miles wide, several 
thousand miles long, bounded south by the Steppe, north 
by the Arctic waste, gathering in not less than half a 
million cultivators each year from Russia, and as yet in 
its infancy. When the snow melts in the spring, 
Siberia becomes suddenly a carpet of wild flowers. 
Ploughing and seecjing are rushed jahead, and with 
incredible rapidity, in the mellowing, almost muggy 
weather, the grain sprouts, becomes green, is full grown, 
and maturing to harvest. It is a fine wheat. The belt 
is a great producer of cattle too. The meat is of prime 
quality. The very finest butter I have tasted came from 
Omsk, whilst the butter shippers of Denmark exploit 
Siberia for their own ends. Nor do I forget her great 
droves of horses. By October, Siberia's season is over. 
The harvest is gathered in. The hay is stacked. The 
stock are in winter quarters. The wood is cut and 
piled. The stoves are lit, and the double windows in the 
stoutly built log houses hermetically sealed. By Novem- 
ber, the people go in furs, and high felt boots. The 
sledges begin running on the ice, or along the posting 
routes. The days close in ; the thermometer settles down 
far below zero; and the great territory falls again into 
a long sleep. 

Below Samara, the Volga widened; il was muddied 
too, and sand banks were now seen. This was a grain 
country, interspersed with bare uplands, whence dust 
storms came blowing; and the weather was become hot. 
The Russians, travelling in the saloon, came and went. 
They paid for the bare cabin, and mostly provided their 
own sheets, which seemed fine, and carefully marked. 
They carried their own tea equipage, lump sugar, lemon, 
and a tin box with cakes and sweetmeats. I observed 
a fastidiousness as to their person, their hands and nails, 



ARCHANGEL TO ASTRACHAN 207 

their linen — indeed I thought them rather distinguished ; 
they read absorbedly, seemed to talk cleverly, often 
played the piano well; but with the stranger were shy 
and reserved. 

Here was Saratoff, a provincial capital; exhausting 
its interior, I walked out to the confines, and sat to muse 
awhile. The immensity of Russia was upon me. I was 
trying, in time and space, to place these many mil- 
lions of beings. They were so spacious themselves! 
And so haphazard! Many of them drove you to mad- 
ness. Yet in their own good time things got done, and 
well done at that, and you stood confounded. 

Give him time! In his own way, which is not your 
way, the Slav will come for certain. In one hundred 
years he will be the great fact in Europe — shy and 
reserved with the outer world, no doubt; constitution- 
ally and climatically sad; but the great fact in Europe 
nevertheless. Observe this shockheaded one who comes 
out of Saratoff, how half -shyly, half -furtively he regards 
you. His peasant mind strives gigantically to express 
something — ^he knows not what. Throughout Russia 
millions of just such shockheaded ones go shyly, fur- 
tively, mutely as yet, trying to express — what? Give 
them time ; some day the words will come ! These sev« 
eral figures, lying huddled on the plain, are peasants 
who sleep off a drunken stupor. Always at city out- 
skirts I had seen them thus, sleeping it off in the heat 
and the rain, and in Siberia, often in the snow. Here 
is one — capless, coatless, lying on his arm, his thick hair 
covering his eyes, breathing heavily. Do not scorn 
him; he may be some mute, inglorious Christ. 

Then there came the frontier-like town of Tzaritzin, 
with a country less fertile, given to sandy wastes, an 
ever-widening river, and a spell of real heat; yet before 
a month or two, ice would cover this river, and snow 



£08 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

this hot, sandy waste. Here one saw the yak as a beast 
of burden; from Tzaritzin to Pekin, many thousands 
of miles apart, this uncouth dromedary is harnessed to 
the service of man. 

Next morning we were saihng between low-lying delta 
lands, which merged into immense meadows of cut and 
stacked hay ; and by midday, lying on each side the river, 
here a mile wide, we had arrived at the city of 
Astrachan. 

Here was the great depot between Europe and Asia, 
between Caspian Sea and Volga River ; the long and busy 
river front, the many steamers and barges at the wharves, 
spoke its commercial importance. Astrachan's pecul- 
iar product is not the silky black lambskin named after 
it ; it is the sturgeon, a fish which here reaches perfection 
where the salt of the sea meets the fresh of the river. 
It is caught in immense numbers; dried and salted, and 
sent up-river in bulk. The roe of the sturgeon, or 
caviare^ — especially the black roe, the ikra, eaten by 
Russians with hot bread and chopped green onion — is 
sent from Astrachan over the world. 

Some hours below Astrachan, the Volga ends in the 
Caspian Sea. Sailing down this inland sea, so salt, so 
shallow, so easily lashed into fury, yet carrying a great 
shipping, you reach upon its western shore the city of 
Baku, lying as it were in a desert, yet because of its 
oil wells supporting a quarter of a million people. 
Indeed Baku, and the Caspian itself, is the centre of a 
remarkable zone. Oil has been struck, and has gushed, 
from spots all round the Caspian; whilst I have seen oil 
wells flowing from islands in the sea itself. Baku has 
now seen its best days — those few square miles — but the 
whole zone of the Caspian remains; and a great expan- 
sion of all this region, because of its oil, must come 



ARCHANGEL TO ASTRACHAN 209 

about. Caspian oil gave a dead Swede his millions, 
and science, literature and art their Nobel prizes. 

Leaving- Baku, and the desert shores of the Caspian, 
I was carried by train across the fertile country of the 
Kuban Cossacks, the second day reaching Russia proper, 
and the city of Rostoff-on-Don. Soon I was walking 
the Rostoff streets, among the Sunday crowds. Espe- 
cially are they congregated in some garden, round a 
military band. In this Russian crowd, as in all her 
crowds (I have seen it a hundred times), stand many 
women heavy with child. They stand so utterly placidly. 
'This is the natural thing! And the entirely seemly!" 
their whole bearing seems to say. The eyes of other 
women are ranging stealthily. "I wonder if you are the 
man?" they keep saying. At the first blush, these are 
the glances of wantons; but meet their eyes full, and at 
the back of them lies a something which will give you 
pause. "Remember, I want to have children!" it says. 
'That's what I'm here for; I want to have lots of 
children!" 

The Slav women stand for a boundless, an appalling 
vitality. In the mass, they are a tidal wave of life; and 
in Nature's eyes, where only life counts, are the strong- 
est, greatest thing in Russia. Beside them, the Slav 
men, vital and enduring themselves, fade into noth- 
ingness. 

I left Rostofif at night. Morning found the train 
steaming through the biggest wheat field in the world; 
there was nothing but wheat to the horizon, yellow for 
the harvest, and hundreds of machines, each driven by 
four horses, were cutting and binding. All day it lasted, 
and at night, under the summer moon, the train still 
passed through wheat for mile after mile. Millions 
of acres of wheat! Millions of placid women conceiv- 



210 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

ing, and bringing forth ! Nature's reservoirs are bottom- 
less hereabouts — and the future is the Slavs'. 

Next day there came a break in the wheat. A wide 
river flowed, and on the high bank of it, among old 
trees, stood gilded dome after gilded dome. We were 
come to the holy city of Kief. Standing upon this high 
ridge, I viewed the winding, branching river, far below, 
the many miles of hay-meadows and pasturage, the for- 
ests on the horizon. Turning about, I faced the magnifi- 
cent churches, the great religious establishments, the 
richly endowed monasteries. From many of these a 
deep chanting issued, and I entered now here, now there, 
to listen. Such part singing I had never heard; such 
serried ranks of sleek, bearded priests and choristers 
never seen. No organ played ; but as each canticle ended, 
there lingered a long-drawn-out hum, rich and deep, 
which went reverberating round and round the dome. 
This was Holy Russia indeed ! 

[To-day chaos has come upon Russia, and the un- 
thinking world believes her ruined. She is not. In her 
story this revolution is but an incident. Soon life and 
work will become normal. Those vast harvests be gath- 
ered in as of old. Those shaggy men will see with clearer 
eyes; those placid women bear their children in a hap- 
pier land.] 



CHAPTER XIII 

JERUSALEM AND THE JEWS 

Now, in our world- journey, we come to the East — ^to 
those lands of glamour where I so often wandered. I 
would that I could cast their glamour over you, that you 
might see them with my sight, and long for them with a 
furious longing. I think of the East at dawn, of innum- 
erable holy men upon the flat roofs, whose cries go 
out over the desert. I think of her at noon ; the tiles of 
Samarkand flash in the sun. The pilgrims reach Kerbela, 
the dhoongas gli&c' along Jhelum River, the lotuses float 
beside the palace at Mandalay. But the night, with its 
scents and sounds! ... I think I am to die in the East 
at night. 



The sun was setting behind Port Said. Mellow rays 
of light lay upon steamers anchored there, upon the 
Egyptian swarms who coaled them, upon the stately 
domed edifice of the Canal Administration, upon de 
Lesseps himself — a de Lesseps of stone — standing out 
on the breakwater. It was Sunday evening, and the 
weekly steamer of the Khedivial Line passed out heading 
for Palestine, and the Syrian Coast. The season was 
early March, and the tourist stream towards the Holy 
Land was setting in; among the forty passengers were 
a number of elderly women, and there were five clergy- 
men. On the steamer's after deck were piled crates of 
vegetables ; the market gardeners about Alexandria were 
sending tomatoes and the many-leafed artichoke to the 
Syrian markets. 

211 



212 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

At seven in the morning I landed at Jaffa, and at 
eight the train went out over the narrow-gauge Hne. We 
passed for some miles through orange gardens, the trees 
laden with ripe fruit, and came on to the considerable 
plain of Sharon. Arabs ploughed here with their oxen; 
on the expanses of grass shepherds tended their sheep 
and goats; and distant trains of camels crossed it. Be- 
yond this lay a rolling country, less fertile, and the tent 
encampments of Bedouins were seen. The low hills of 
Judea, bare and stony, now lay ahead. Entering among 
these, the train passed into a rocky gorge, and wind- 
ing for an hour and a half upwards, along watercourses, 
came out upon a plateau on the hill tops. 

Here was Jerusalem. Up among these rocks, was the 
holy city of Jew and Christian. That the first builders 
should have perched it on stony ground, among hills so 
utterly barren, occasioned in me a deep surprise. The 
station lay a mile out. A deep rift lay between it and 
the high fortress-like walls of the city. Beyond these 
5tood Mount Zion, and at their extremity the moated 
:itadel of King David, where, through the Jaffa Gate, 
me passes into the heart of the town. 

Here are thronged, narrow streets, a medley of cos- 
tume and of people; yet one thing you see in a flash. 
Jerusalem is Jewish. Overwhelmingly it is a city of 
Jews. You have walked a hundred paces beyond the 
Jaffa Gate, and have seen a thousand men go by. There 
was a Franciscan monk, a German peasant from the 
colony, a group of Russian pilgrims, a band of Arabs — 
but of Gentiles that was all. The rest were Jews. This 
throng which passes is a Jewish throng. They talk 
Arabic and Spanish, German, Russian, and Polish, but 
they are Jews. 

And how Jewish ! The white, serious faces, the pierc- 
ing dark eyes — the hooked impersonal noses. There are 



JERUSALEM AND THE JEWS 213 

ever so many with ringlets, with kaftan and gaberdine, 
in quilted gown, girdle, and wearing the velvety round 
hat; the Spanish Jew, turbaned, bearded and hawk-like; 
the Austrian, with a suggestion of blond; the Oriental 
Jew of Tripoli and Tunis, of Bagdad and Bokhara; in 
the greasy bowlers, and the long overcoats which were 
always second-hand, the Poles and the Russians shuffle 
past, and there is noise, buying and selling, a drone of 
old men reading their Bibles, a whining of beggars, a 
continuous passing up and down, a great laziness, and a 
permeating smell. 

These Jews are dirty, and they are poor. Vicious 
they are not; but if one might hazard a guess, they are 
degenerate. In this throng you will not find ten men 
of muscle, not ten to go out on the land and produce. 
They crowd in this city, and living much upon outside 
doles, are become parasitic. For them, it is enough to be 
Jews. Observing the Letter of the Law, steeped in cus- 
tom and observance, they judge themselves the Chosen 
People still. But for those who see things as they are, 
these are the theology-ridden dregs of a great race. 

The streets narrow into the bazaars, built under 
vaulted arches of stone, and in their essence utilitarian. 
Foodstuffs, charcoal, clothing, tin and copper ware, 
shabby jewellery and the like, are exposed, but you will 
look in vain for any beautiful thing. At this season, in 
the bazaars, the eye is attracted to the piles of Jaffa 
oranges; and especially to the cauliflowers, carried in 
panniers on the backs of Arab hawkers, which seem to 
be the finest in existence. These are mostly grown 
at a neighbouring village, and alone among vegetables are 
entitled to the "Jerusalem'' prefix.* 

* The "Jerusalem" artichoke is a corruption of the Italian girasole 
— sunflower. "Artichoke" is corrupted from the Arab Alkarshuf ; 
the true artichoke being a native of Barbary. 

— (Oxford English Dictionary.) 



gl4 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

Leaving the bazaars, I passed through the labyrinthine 
windings of masonry which make up the city, and pres- 
ently came to the Wailing Place of the Jews. A high 
retaining wall, built of the immense stones that were in 
Solomon's Temple, marks the spot. It was not the 
Sabbath, nor a day set apart for wailing, yet some thirty 
men and women were there. With foreheads against the 
wall, some stood inanimate, others recited passages of 
scripture, and a number were uttering loud moans. 

As I looked on this scene, there was a stir among a 
group who sat in the sun ; nine magnificent old men pre- 
sented themselves before me. They seemed to be six 
feet high; they were bearded, and had massive, intellec- 
tual heads. These were Moghrabin — ^Jews of Morocco 
and Tripoli — ^professional beggars, mostly blind, and 
quite useless. After receiving each man his penny, and 
giving no word of thanks, they returned into the sun 
to sleep. 

A litany, says my guide-book, is sometimes chanted by 
Jews at the Wailing Place. It is as follows: 

Reader: Because of the Palace which is deserted — 

People: We sit alone and weep. 

Reader: Because of the Temple which is destroyed, 

Because of the Walls which are broken down, 

Because of our greatness which is departed, 

Because of the precious stones of the Temple ground to 

powder, 
Because of our priests who have gone astray, 
Because of our kings who have continued bad — 

People: We sit alone and weep. 

As I Strolled from the Wailing Place, I, too, framed 
a chant for these people. But my song of the Jews was 
a psean, a song of triumph, a death-blow to the Wailing 
Place for evermore : 

Wail not, O ye people! 

Is it a Spiritual Kingdom ye mourn? Verily, no. 

The Spiritual Kingdom is within, and never fadeth. 



JERUSALEM AND THE JEWS 215 

Is it a temporal? Then hear me: 

I have been to the ends of the earth, and bring you tidings. 

For a mile on Broadway I passed dry-goods stores, noting the 
names upon them, and I saw many to be wholesale, 

I gazed in the windows of the furniture emporiums in Chicago, 

I have poured diamonds from a bucket at Kimberley, and of Hat- 
ton Garden also have I had inside vision, 

I have stood "between the chains" at Johannesburg, and read the 
names upon scrip certificates, 

I have taken note of real estate transfers, issued by the registrars' 
department of Sydney, N.S.W., 

I have passed along Throgmorton Street, and I have seen those 
who came and went at the Parquet, 

I have witnessed the auction pools in the smoking-rooms of great 
steamships, 

I have eaten at Krasnopolsky, in Amsterdam, and supped at the 
Frankfurter Hof; and at the Hotel Metropole, Brighton, 1 
did mistake the visitors' book for the wine list. 

These things have I seen and done, O ye people ! 

Therefore I say unto you, Wail not! The Day is come! 

Ye have entered into such a kingdom as your forefathers never 
imagined. 

Ye are become powerful and rich, nay, exceeding rich, 

Ye have nobbled the press, have dispossessed kings, and are be- 
come the arbiters of war itself, 

Your People, chosen of old, now own half the earth. Why wail? 

Spring is a pleasant time in Judea. All day long, 
more like than not, the sun shines out of a pale blue sky, 
and the distant hills beyond the Jordan and the Dead Sea 
are blue. As one walks from Jerusalem, countrywards, 
the eye accustoms itself to the stony hill tops, to the ever- 
present flat gravestones. There is little colour, but as 
pledge of the spring, here is an almond-tree blossoming, 
and over there a meadow is bright with the scarlet anem- 
one. If you should walk so far as Bethlehem, you will 
see vines on terraces below the town, but these are not 
yet green. 

Blue sky! Stony hills! Gravestones! An almond 
tree! A flowery meadow! Low-lying vines! In Ger- 
man these become Himmelblau, Steinburg, Grabenstein, 
Mandelbaum, Blumenfeld, Weinthal; and as we read a 



216 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

light begins to dawn. When the Jews in Central Europe 
were dispossessed of their oriental names, and bidden 
seek others in the inanimate world, it was surely a Jew 
of Jerusalem, one who had walked thus country wards 
in the spring, who turned them to these Judean hills for 
a nomenclature. 

But Cohen is not of the hills. 

Few Jews are seen in the Moslem quarter. Their 
filthy alleys abut on the Mosque of Omar, they dwell 
within stones' throw of its vast courtyard — where are 
cypress trees and green grass, bubbling water, fresh air, 
and such a vista as Rome might envy — yet I doubt if a 
Jew sets foot there. 

For this was the site of the Temple! Here stood 
the sacred rock ! Here David, Solomon and Zerubbabel, 
the greatest men in Israel, spoke with Jehovah face to 
face! Shall the Jew, down-trodden and oppressed, a 
creature of the Turk, go there tO' witness Mahomedan 
triumph? Fresh air may be well enough, and there are 
always the sunny slopes outside the Jaffa Gate ; but fresh 
air, or no fresh air, so help him God, he can wait ; he 
will see the thing through ! 

The Jews cannot forget they once ruled here, where 
they are now a subject race; that their religion held men 
in sway before Mahomet was born or thought of. Yet 
with it all, despite cycles of persecution, and a thou- 
sand years of contempt, they retain a pathetic affinity for 
Islam. Mahomedans, too, have a certain sentiment for 
Jews. The Arabs, especially, had a deep strain of Sem- 
itic blood, while Mahomet's temperament, mind and 
creed were Jewish through and through. Another bond 
of imion lay in their simultaneous banishment from 
Spain. Many Jewish communities, when turned out of 
Spain, settled in Islam, and to this day Spanish is spoken 
in ghettos throughout the near East. 



JERUSALEM AND THE JEWS 217 

So the Jew is found living- not only in Palestine, but 
wherever there are Mahomedans ; and not as a cultiva- 
tor of the soil, but a town-dweller. Mahomedan cities 
bordering the Mediterranean hold a thick fringe of Jews. 
I will vouch for there being one hundred and fifty thou- 
sand in the towns of Morocco and I have seen many 
thousands in Algiers, Tunis, Alexandria, Jaffa, Beyrout, 
Tripoli, Rhodes, Smyrna, and Constantinople. There 
are several thousand Jews in Aden — ''the land of Uz" — 
of a pronounced caste, and dating back to biblical times. 
There are eighty thousand Jews in Jerusalem, and a large 
colony in Damascus. In Bagdad there are seventy thou- 
sand, forming one-half the city's population. There are 
Jews in each township of Mesopotamia. At Cochin, on 
the Malabar Coast of India, I saw a Jewish colony which 
dates back many centuries; the Arabs had a connection 
with this coast, and it is reasonably certain the Jews 
followed them there. I saw Jews in Teheran. In Bok- 
hara there have been Jews from time immemorial. They 
have passed through many vicissitudes, and the present 
community, six thousand strong, has won its way to 
something approaching respect. They are admittedly 
the honestest sect in Bokhara, and right living people. 
But this is not exceptional. The Oriental Jew, by and 
large, is an honest man, and a right-living; it is his ap- 
palling filth which the world cannot stomach. It is a 
disconcerting fact that the Oriental Jew, who shuns fresh 
air, remains dirty from choice, and lives in a foul-smell- 
ing warren, is as long lived as the cleanest Gentile, and 
nearly always his intellectual superior. 

If you stand upon the battlements of Jerusalem, or 
on the Mosque of Omar's splendid platform, the Chris- 
tian city will be revealed. It is a city of white masonry, 
very massive, of cupolas within the city, and church 



218 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

spires without. Knowing it better, you will add to these 
the high compotind walls, the hostels, the mysterious little 
doors, where, on the ringing of a bell, appears a French 
nun or a Greek priest; the endless ruins and caves and 
rock tombs; the dim churches, above and below ground, 
where voices reverberate, and the air is heavy with in- 
cense; and the innumerable shrines, in which men and 
women suddenly prostrate themselves, showering kisses. 
I remember a door in a wall they opened for me, and I 
passed into a courtyard. At one corner, steps led down 
to the supposititious Pool of Siloam; but the glory of 
the courtyard was a bed of white violets, which a French 
brotherhood tended with care. 

Below the battlements, a little valley falls away. 
Through it once ran the brook Kedron. On its slopes 
the flat gravestones of unnumbered Moslems now rest. 
Just across the valley there is a walled garden, one- 
third of an acre in area. It is thought to be the Garden 
of Gethsemane. Lovingly tended by the Franciscans, 
there are cypresses in the garden, and hoary olive trees 
of fabulous age. At this season the stocks smell sweetly. 
A short distance from here, on the hillside, is the cave 
that they call the tomb of Mary. It is hewn in the rock, 
and so large as to be used for a chapel. From the vaulted 
entrance, fifty steps lead down into the darkness, where, 
when I descended, the Armenians were holding a mass. 
The air was heavy with incense, and with the exhala- 
tions of the worshippers, indeed it was almost foetid; 
but my candle threw light upon a well of pure water, cut 
in the rock floor. 

Leaving the open spaces around the mosque, I retrace 
my steps through the winding alleys, and come to the 
Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Easter time is near, when 
the Russian pilgrims gather in Jerusalem; yesterday a 
band of peasants, coming on foot, had passed me out- 



JERUSALEM AND THE JEWS 219 

side the Damascus Gate, and I now found a number 
collected about the church. They were poor people, 
roughly clad, and mostly women. Tears streamed from 
their faces, and several lay prostrate, kissing the vener- 
ated ground. In the shrine itself, in the semi-darkness, 
three strong women lunged heavily against me ; they were 
blinded and shaken with emotion. 

That day I drove to Bethlehem. In the Church of the 
Nativity, when I entered, the Greeks were conducting 
a service, and a number of priests stood by the altar, 
or sat in their stalls. As I listened to the chanting, 
a party of tourists appeared — some eight American wo- 
men, stout and masterful, travelling without their men. 
Coming out of the nave, and finding no impediment to 
their progress, they seemed, as it were, to line up, hip to 
fat hip, and advanced in a threatening phalanx. They 
stopped, but at the altar's very threshold, where they 
stood, guide-books in hand, keenly appreciative. Invol- 
untarily, as they bore down on him, the officiating priest 
appeared to falter, and it almost seemed that masterful 
voices were bidding him "get on with his stunt." 

In a cave below this church — the manger of the Nativ- 
ity — a silver star is let into the rock ; when I entered the 
cave, the Russian women were here again, lying down 
to kiss each silver ray. 

Wherever I went were shrines and churches. On 
Mount Zion, besides the palace of Caiaphas the High 
Priest, near the newly finished Cathedral of the German 
Catholics, the Armenian Patriarch and his monks in- 
habit a strange congeries of dwellings. Outside the 
walls is the monastery of the Copts, from Egypt, and 
the church of their neighbours, the Abyssinians. These 
men are negroid, mostly coal black; their ritual leans 
towards bells, candles, and incense, and a priest clad in 
garish silks; yet in their own way they seemed sincere. 



220 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

In the Russian Church, within the great Russian com- 
pound, as I passed, a service was being held ; the peasant 
pilgrims crowded it to the doors. At the village of 
Karem, an hour's drive, stands the monastery of St. 
John. In the adjacent Church, that I thought to find 
empty, the brotherhood chanted their afternoon prayer. 
Near here dwell a colony of Russian nuns; they too 
prayed earnestly through that sunny afternoon. 

Outside the Damascus Gate, in a meadow, there was 
an encampment of gipsies. Something lower, more va- 
grant than the Bedouin, they come out of Arabia, wan- 
dering ever. In all this Holy Land these seemed the 
only people not at prayer, the one tribe not fearful of 
its soul. 

What is the riddle of it all? How are we to take 
human nature in this strange place? I ask you, kneeling 
there, to tell me this : Where, in these things, do the 
emotions end? Where does the intellect begin? It will 
soon be Easter, and when Easter comes, the Vali will 
send a company of Mahomedan soldiers to guard the 
Holy Sepulchre. If he did not do so, Greeks and Catho- 
lics, Syrians, Copts and Armenians — Christians all — 
would fight for the best stances, and they would fight to 
the death. For days I have seen all these sects at prayer. 
I have h«^.ard chanting in dim aisles, have breathed air 
heavy with incense, have witnessed untold emotion. 
These things, and much more, I have seen, and I have 
given credit where it seemicd due ; yet my brain declares 
this sending of soldiers to be the cardinal fact in all the 
Holy Land. 

Those olive trees in the Garden of Gethsemane seemed 
a thousand years old. It may even be they were growing 
in the days of Jesus Christ. At first they were young 
and lovely, covered with leaves, yielding bounteously 



JERUSALEM AND THE JEWS 221 

their fruit. Now they have become gnarled and shape- 
less masses of wood, wellnigh leafless, bearing no fruit, 
cumbering uselessly the earth. To me, they are like 
Christianity. It, too, grew to life here; a young and 
lovely tree, of pure and simple conception, its leaves were 
to be self-denial, simplicity of life, its fruit love. What 
has it become? 

There was One God. But there came a night when 
the trunk gnarled, the leaves shrivelled — and the Athana- 
sian Creed was bom. 

Christians were to tread the path of unity : the cry was 
"Peace on Earth, Goodwill towards men." They split. 
Creeds and factions, each crying out the "true way," 
filled the earth. The sectarian hatreds of Christians have 
become a great fact. 

There was to be humility, self-effacement; there was 
to be scorning of money, of worldliness. But to-day men 
and women laugh humility to scorn. In our England, 
pride of family, precedence, titles and decorations, 
notoriety, and — above all — wealth, are the things sought 
after. The National Church does not lag behind. Its 
head, the Archbishop of Canterbury, draws fifteen thou- 
sand a year, and takes precedence after royalty. His 
stultifying of Christ is thought the most natural thing 
in the world; yet he is Christ's understudy in England 
as it were, the exemplar of the Jesus tradition. 

His Grace stands there pained and shocked: a spade 
having been called a spade. Plaintively he points to his 
palaces, to his retinues : "That's where my money goes," 
he cries; "I spend little on myself." 

"But, Good your Grace, if your palaces offend, sur- 
render your palaces ! Surrender your troops of servants ! 
Surrender, if you would be like Him, your sumptuous 
settings, your dignities, your robes! Christ had none 
of these. He was not clad in fine linen. He did not fare 



222 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

richly. He took the lowest places at feasts. Yoti mean 
very well, I know. But like the multitude who call them- 
selves Christians, you have gone blind T 

The serious and thinking to-day are streaming away 
from such churches. There are those of us who must 
and will have sincerity in life. We seek it out on the 
hills, or with Nature in the wilderness. Never again 
shall we seek it in creeds which are dead as the olive 
trees, and do not know it. 

Leaving Jerusalem by the Damascus Gate, a carriage 
road runs north over the bleak, stony hills, towards 
Samaria and Galilee. In a drive of eight hours I reached 
the town of Nablous — the ancient Shechem, and at a 
remote period the capital of Palestine. Lying beneath 
Mount Gerizim, where are Jacob's Well, the tomb of 
Joseph, and other venerated spots, the town was a land- 
mark in all Israel. Shechem became the holy city of the 
Samaritans, a sect or tribe whose origin is lost in the 
dim past, but who, in reduced numbers, have existed 
down to the present. Retaining their religious customs 
and prejudices, they number now some two hundred 
souls, dwellmg together here, and ruled hereditarily by 
their chief priest. 

A priest of these people, a son, I take it, of the chief 
priest, met me in the streets of Nablous, and bade me to 
the Samaritan quarter. Passing into a labyrinth of 
masonry, and of covered ways, we emerged upon the 
roofs, among stone cupolas. Here we were joined by 
three others, with keys, and upon the unlocking of doors, 
I was ushered into the Samaritan Synagogue. This 
was a mere attic, and save for a green curtain at one 
end, quite bare. A carpet was now spread for me, and 
from behind the curtain they produced an engraved metal 
cylinder, which, drawing a bow at a venture, I guessed 



JERUSALEM AND THE JEWS 223 

to be Urim and Thummim. But this being opened out 
lengthwise, as it were upon a hinge, disclosed the codex 
of the Samaritan Pentateuch, in Hebrew, a most ancient 
manuscript,, which antiquarians view with emotion. In 
these five earlier books of the Samaritans, so like their 
own, the Jews themselves find little that is unorthodox; 
but the Samaritans took undoubted Hberties with Joshua. 

The four Samaritan priests being now ranged about 
me, I took stock of what must be the purest, the most in- 
bred facial type in the world. The type was ultra- 
Jewish. These men, physically, were Super- Jews: I 
would say Jews with a high Persian forehead ; Jews with 
a cross of Zoroaster — if ever he did cross. 

My friends, coming to business, now let it be known, 
that they were a poor people, and their church sorely 
in need of funds. They were gratified by the receipt of 
two francs. After further converse, I bid them good- 
bye, going out over the roofs again, as I had come. In 
the gardens of Nablous a fine stream of water ran, a 
foretaste of that city of streams whither I was journey- 
ing — Damascus. 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE MAHOMEDAN EAST 

Mahomet, Founder of the Faith, the greatest man to 
come out of Arabia, was born six hundred years late. 
By that time, Christianity had spread to Europe, into a 
cool climate, and among people who, because of that very 
climate, were destined to rule the world. It followed that 
the creed of these peoples was assured the utmost pres- 
tige and support down through the centuries. 

Mahomedanism, on the other hand, was adopted by 
the men of the heat belt, who, because of that envi- 
ronment, were to remain backward and ignorant, and drag 
their creed down to their own level. The climate they 
lived in, as much as the religion they professed, elevated 
the Christians; just as the climate they lived in, as much 
as the teachings of the Koran, held back the followers 
of Mahomet. 

But no one can rob Mahomet of this: he taught that 
there was One God. His religion has run to seed in the 
heat, but it has never lost that fine conception. But 
Christianity, very early, fell into the clutches of mystics, 
and emerged from them plus the Holy Trinity — a sort 
of metaphysical syndicate — an idea borrowed from the 
Hindus. I can respect the conception of One God; 
but my intelligence is outraged by the Trinity. Mahomet 
gave his followers one god and three wives; the Chris- 
tians found themselves pledged to one wife and three 
gods. 

Mahomet was hardly dead when jealousy and intrigue 

224 



THE MAHOMEDAN EAST 225 

broke out among his followers. This might have been 
foretold, for in their long history the Arabs have never 
cohered. A race with unusual intelligence, they lacked 
unity, so that they have never taken, and will never take, 
the place in the world which should be theirs. 

In two other races of fine intelligence we have seen 
this same quality — in the Poles and in the Irish. They 
cannot imite. Or, once united, they cannot cohere. 
There is a maggot in their brain. They lack the political 
instinct With all their talents, neither race has achieved, 
nor ever will achieve, national stability.* 

The power which passed from Mahomet, rested with 
a certain Meccan clan, from which were chosen his 
successors, or khalifs; until Ali, the fourth khalif, the 
Prophet's cousin, and son-in-law, who flouted the clan, 
and prepared to establish a succession of the blood. His 
party became known as the Shiahs, or sectarians. 

But Ali lost the day. The Khali fate was wrested from 
him by the orthodox Arabs, or Sunnis, and its seat trans- 
ferred from Medina to Damascus; whilst he, with his 
disgruntled minority, set up as a rival at Kufa. He was 
assassinated near there by the Sunnis. His oldest son, 
Hassan, Mahomet's grandson, presently retired to 
Medina, ;where some say he was poisoned; and his 
younger, more militant son, Hosein, assumed the lead- 
ership. A few years later, the Khalif of Damascus sent 
an army against the Shiahs, and Hosein, together with 
his trusty lieutenant and half-brother. Abbas, and many 
of his followers, perished on the desert field of Ker- 
bela. 

His leadership, his descent, and the mournful story of 

*As to the Irish: the English, with all their character, lack 
subtlety. Had they, thirty years ago, given Ireland Home Rule 
with alacrity, the factions which would have formed there would 
now be only hating each other, and feeling for England as one feels 
for a dear old friend. 



2^6 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

his martyrdom, cast the utmost glamour upon Hosein's 
memory, which to the Shiahs became holy. Nine of his 
direct descendants held the Shiah Khalifate. They are 
known as the Imams, and revered by the sect as proph- 
ets. Their tombs are scattered over the deserts of 
Northern Arabia, Mesopotamia and Persia, and form 
the most beautiful and romantic group of shrines in the 
world. The last Imam is said to have supernaturally dis- 
appeared, and his second coming is eagerly awaited by 
the Shiahs, who, though still a minority, now number 
many milHons. 

The Mahomedan faith, which was religion and gov- 
ernment combined, spread like fire. Yet the Arabs, who 
dominated it, did not cease their intriguing, and Sunnis 
and Shiahs split in their turn ; from each, as time went by, 
there branched off sects and refinements of sects without 
end. But in the main, the first great cleavage persisted, 
and Moslems everywhere were Sunni or Shiah, regard- 
ing each other, one may suppose, as Catholics and Prot- 
estants did. Even in distant Spain, the Sunnis of Cor- 
dova fought the Shiahs of Seville for hundreds of years. 

In course of time Islam had spread from Morocco to 
Java, and from the Asiatic Steppe to Timbuctoo. Its 
fierceness and fervour were given it by the Arabs. But 
its art and beauty, which came later, were never theirs 
to give. These came first of all, and in fullest measure, 
from the Persians. The coloured tiles, the glory of 
Mahomedan building, were Persian, as were the golden 
minarets on the desert tombs of the Imams. The dec- 
orators of Moorish Spain were Byzantines and Copts— 
actually Christians — brought in because of their art by 
the Arabs. Finally there came the Moguls — again not 
Arabs. One can hardly enumerate the beauties this illus- 
trious dynasty of Emperor-Architects created. The 
Arabs conquered for Islam; the Persians, and the Mo- 



THE MAHOMEDAN EAST m 

guls, cast a glamour over her. By the time Mahomet 
had been dead a thousand years, his sway spread over 
a vast Empire, and romantic, beautiful mosques and 
shrines and palaces, many of them set far out in the 
desert, were scattered through it from end to end. 

But Islam is not all a desert. The wide country of 
Asia Minor is much of it, a land of grain, of rivers, of 
forests, of cedar and beech and oak, of all that is green. 
Up in the northeastern comer I recall mountain slopes, 
with many a mountain village perched among trees, with 
rushing brooks, with a hundred emerald patches of 
tobacco and maize. Such charming hill paths wind up 
each expanse; and where they wind through old groves 
of chestnuts and oaks, where the grass is greenest, and 
some crystal brook rushes down, there are always a few 
graves clustered, with their flat, white stones. There 
is a grave I remember, too, by the orchards outside 
Damascus. Here Buckle lies buried; and I placed a 
bunch of blossoming apricot upon it. 

Not all a desert 1 The Valley of Kashmir lies in 
Islam — one of the oldest, most placid valleys of man- 
kind, where your houseboat drifts quietly along the 
waterways from lake to lake, or lies tied up beneath 
some grove of chenar trees. If you come to this valley 
in the springtime, as I came, you will see the chenars 
burst into leaf as it were in a night, and one day you 
will catch the pink almond blossom against the distant 
snows of the Karakoram. At this time, too, a vast 
assemblage repairs to the Dal Lake, renowned in Islam 
for its beauty, to the Mosque of Hazrat Bal upon its 
shores, where is treasured a hair of Mahomet's beard. 
There is a glade of giant chenars nearby, and orchards 
in blossom ; and across the lake lie Shalimar and Nishat 
Bagh, with their rose terraces and splashing fountains — 



228 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

kiosks of the Moguls, pleasure gardens of a long ago. 

Not all a desert! From Chaman, once, crossing the 
Afghan frontier, I strolled across the plain. There is a 
fort out there, whence the Amir's soldiers are wont to 
snipe at strangers in Islam. This balmy autumn morn- 
ing no one molested ; but presently there woimd down the 
Western hills, me-ward across the plain, trains of don- 
keys. They carried fresh grapes for markets along the 
frontier, and dried apricots, which would travel to 
bazaars more distant. These I discovered, came from 
the valley around Kandahar, eighty miles away, which 
the natives spoke of as the Garden of Asia. 

When the donkey trains had passed, I lay in the sun- 
shine and conjured up this valley. Afghanistan a fruit 
garden! Even if it were but the vale of Kandahar! 
Right across Asia, in this belt north of the tropics, often 
in highland country, one came upon these surprises, 
came, where you expected a waste, upon the desert blos- 
soming like the rose. I recalled the fig orchards in the 
country behind Smyrna, the almond groves out from 
Damascus, the grapes at the oasis of Karaj, in Persia, 
the pomegranates of late autumn at Teheran, the apri- 
cots fruiting beside the irrigation ditches at Merv and 
outside the walls of Bokhara, and the peerless melons 
of Samarkand. At Chaman, yonder, upon the bare plain, 
were brick-red chrysanthemums in flower: only these, 
yet because of their watering, more massy in blossom 
than any I had ever seen. At Peshawar, further up the 
frontier, and but a stone's throw from the Khyber Pass, 
I remembered unique flaming hedges of the dog-rose. On 
the hillsides, as I drove into Kashmir, all along the 
Jhelum Gorge, wonderful wild flowers grew. About the 
Himalayan forests — all about Simla — grew a blood-red 
rhododendron, and in places one that was snow-white; 
these on no bushes, but on trees, high and wind-swept, 



THE MAHOMEDAN EAST 229 

and they were wild as the wind itself. Far eastward, 
on the slopes of Korea and Japan, wild azaleas, in many 
shades, covered hill upon hill with their bloom. West- 
ward, in Palestine, that month of March, the meadows 
of Samaria and Galilee had been a carpet. I saw the 
scarlet anemone oftenest, very velvety to the eye; the 
lubin and the orchid grew in profusion too, and under 
many a rock a bed of cyclamen. ... 

Seating ourselves upon the Magic Carpet — a Persian 
one, need I say — let us choose to be instantaneously set 
down on the Persian plain, at Re, over against Teheran. 
Here is an oasis, with springs gushing from the lime- 
stone, with a mile of old trees and vegetation, and the 
ruins of a city of antiquity. Here, too, is the Mosque of 
Shah Abdul Azim — a much visited shrine; on a Friday, 
I have seen thousands of men cross the waste thither 
from Teheran, to worship. 

Gazing across at Persia's capital, the eye beholds a city 
of the plain, with crenelated earthen ramparts, with 
many trees therein, with several domes flashing a tur- 
quoise blue; and beyond the city a royal castle or two 
perched upon hillocks, the rising desert, the distant north- 
em hills, and the snow-capped peak of Demavend, the 
giant of this region. 

Enter Teheran through one of her twelve gates, and 
find your way to her bazaars — arched vaults of brick, 
dimly lit from above. In this twilight labyrinth, of an 
afternoon, a dense crowd gathers to trade, to eat, to 
gossip [wedged occasionally apart by some camel train 
or procession of heavily laden porters passing through], 
to surge round some frenzied wandering dervish with 
Shiah fanaticism, to follow him, if it be near sunset, 
to some open space for the evening prayers. By five 
o'clock the bazaars are empty, the people gone to the 



230 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

mosques; by nightfall the streets and the open spaces are 
clear, the gates of the city closed, and the day is over. 
You will think Teheran, outside the vivid life of the 
bazaars, a poor and a drab place. You will think the 
Persians, in and out of their capital, a squalid and 
apathetic people. Yet they were a great race for cen- 
turies, the supreme artists in Islam, whose beauties have 
cast a glamour over the desert. But there is nothing 
here. Teheran is modern; and the modern Persians, 
under their futile and rapacious rulers, have atrophied, 
run utterly to seed. The city lies at near 4000 feet, 
in the latitude, let us say, of Gibraltar, and in winter 
is cold and bleak. The waste encircles it for many 
leagues, over which travellers must ride or pass by post- 
chaise. Being fearful of the rude post-houses, as I 
went out to the Caspian, I drove through the nights, and 
in the moonlight saw the long trains of pack camels, 
heavily laden, padding their unwearied way. 

Northeast of Persia, beyond the Caspian Sea, lies a 
vast Mahomedan territory. This is Transcaspia, or 
the Turcoman Steppe — -a waste, where the nomadic tribes 
travel with their camels and goats ; and beyond that again 
is Turkestan, a land of more fertility, centring, in 
religion, round the holy Sunni city of Bokhara. A 
Russian military railway crossed this waste, and there 
crossed I, with my special permit. 

The dead flat plain lay for hundreds of miles. It 
was treeless, but a stunted scrub grew, which camels 
were browsing, and one saw in the distance mounted 
Turcomans. Save for these, and a Russian settlement 
or two, it was a long, featureless day, yet memorable to 
me for the exhilaration of the sunshine, the balm in the 
autumn air. At midnight the train reached the oasis 
of Merv. 



THE MAHOMEDAN EAST 231 

Three thousand horses were tethered around the spa- 
cious market-place of Merv next day. The Turcomans, 
their owners, tall and bearded, of a Mongol cast, in 
sheepskin hat and quilted tunic, traded and gossiped 
and drank tea; they ate melons seated around a carpet, 
and obviously had money to spend. The crops of the 
oasis — cotton, fruits, grain — were now gathered in, the 
vegetation shrivelled and dried ; but fine irrigation ditches 
were running full, and one saw this wealth renewed 
with each coming of spring. 

From all over Islam, a journey sometimes of thousands 
of miles, students and religious devotees are ever setting 
out for Bokhara, the holy and ancient, whose medresses 
and theologians are so renowned in Sunnidom. As you 
approach her, the level Turkestan wastes take on fertility, 
water is seen flowing in the furrows; whilst, if it be 
the spring, cotton is coming up, apricots are flowering in 
the orchards, and the silk mulberry is growing every- 
where. It is from this region, too, that the skins of 
lambs, killed while immature, furnish the true "Astra- 
chan." 

Again you enter a walled city of the plain, but not into 
a city of disillusion. It is true Bokhara is a city of 
dried mud walls and bricks, her foundations set upon 
the detritus and refuse of two thousand years, and not 
architecturally fine ; but the human interest of this foetid, 
throbbing spot cannot be surpassed. 

Each man goes in a flowing gown of rainbow hues. If 
he is well-to-do, this will be of Bokhara silk; if poor, of 
some cheap Russian make; but all are brilliant, and in 
the crowded streets and bazaars is a surfeit of colour. 
Such vivid types of men! Firstly the Sarts — the Bok- 
hariots proper — city dwellers, black bearded, white tur- 
baned, with pale, fanatic faces, steeped in lasciviousness. 



232 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

Many of these go on horseback, aristocrats of this city; 
whilst groups of a dozen or twenty, spreading a carpet, 
will sit on some mosque's platform, gossiping, drinking 
tea, eating the fine melons of the region, awaiting the 
mnesdn's summons to prayer. Their women, of course, 
are never seen. 

The Sart is not ]\'Iongolian, but you will see many Tur- 
comans and Kirghiz in the city who are. These are 
desert men, dwellers on the steppe; of splendid physique, 
with faces as open and simple as the Sart faces are 
subtle. Wearing the high sheepskin hats, they, too, are 
brilliantly clad. There are Persians about. One wonders 
if these Shiahs are acceptable in this holy Sunni city. 
There are Afghans, too, from their own land just to 
the south, zealous Sunnis, many of them drivers of camel 
caravans from Herat and Kabul. 

And there are thousands of Jews. They have lived 
here from days immemorial, and though slain and tor- 
tured, and put upon many times, seem to have won 
through, and to be respected. The Jew is indeed Bok- 
hara's honest man. In the bazaars they sit squatted 
before the finest silks and tapestries, and I found them, 
although we had no tongue in com.mon, polite and ac- 
commodating traders. 

In Bokhara there are Hindus of India, with their 
caste marks upon them. They number perhaps four 
hundred ; they are moneylenders to a man — a calling not 
permitted to Alahomedans — and are natives of Shikarpur, 
in Sind. Their fathers came here, and their grand- 
fathers ; just as their sons and their grandsons will come. 
I met them again at Tashkent, hundreds of miles away 
on the steppe. They are a secretive clan ; but I gathered 
that they will lend at 25 per cent., and a quick turnover. 
They live a mirthless life, without their w^omen, and re- 
turn to India when they have earned what they need. 



THE MAHOMEDAN EAST ftSS 

As interesting as these are the tea dealers. These, 
too, are from British India, from Peshawar, and are 
Sunni Mahomedans of some standing; I came upon a 
well built caravanserai, where dwelt together eighty, and 
spoke with several who answered in good English. As 
agents, they cover the whole of Central Asia; and it is 
a Chinese green tea only which they supply. 

The many mosques of Bokhara are venerable with 
age and sanctity; but they lack great architecture, and 
the tile work of most is falling into dilapidation. The 
holiness and fanaticism of this walled and foetid city 
seize you; but the Bokhara I shall remember is that hu- 
man, coloured throng, those many vivid types of Asiatic 
men who have here come together. 

Some one hundred and fifty miles east of Bokhara — 
no cloistered, fanatic city of the plains, but set upon 
breezy uplands, all in view of far-away, snow-capped 
ranges — is Samarkand. There is the new Samarkand — 
the Russian settlement, under avenues of immense trees — 
and over against it, a mile away, Samarkand itself, the 
city of song and story, the romantic spot of the world. 
This region is linked with the most distinguished of all 
dynasties. About five hundred years ago Samarkand 
was the capital of Timur, or Tamerlane, the master of 
Asia. This great man had roamed and conquered far and 
wide. Like Genghis, his ancestor, he cast his shadow as 
it were upon India, and saw the land to be good. His 
great-grandson, Baber, descended there once and for all, 
Mongol thus becoming Mogul, and a Sunni Mahomedan 
becoming Emperor of Hindustan; and the upland capital 
in Central Asia, a small place at the best, with its breezy 
open spaces, its irrigated meadows, its apricot and melon 
orchards, its territory where camels and horses, goats, 



234 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

and the fat-tailed sheep grazed, slowly faded from its 
estate. 

Yet Samarkand was immortal. At the time of Timur's 
death, still more in the century which followed, the city 
was one great jewel of tile work and mosaics, of deep, 
rich colours which reflected the sun on a thousand facets, 
so that the eyes turned for rest to the snow on the distant 
ranges. 

Immortal to the memory ; not, alas ! to the eye. Samar- 
kand lay in a seismic zone, and through the centuries 
one shock after another has damaged or laid low her 
fanes. Even in our own day, two peerless mosaics have 
crashed to earth; it is but a matter of time and all her 
glories will be gone. 

I stood in the Registan of Samarkand — the market 
place. Upon one side were ranged the booths, where 
Sarts, Turcomans and Khirghiz of the steppe traded to- 
gether, and upon the other three sides rose old mosques, 
their vast fronts covered with coloured tiles. The colours 
were of dark and light blue, yellow, green, white, richer 
and purer than one had ever seen, laid in many an 
arabesque, and the whole place, as the sun shone, was 
flashing like an opal. But one saw gaps ; the walls were 
crumbling, and another shock might work irreparable 
loss. I passed through the mosque to their open court- 
yards behind. Here all was tiled, all was colour as be- 
fore, and the dilapidation not so far gone. 

Leaving the Registan, keeping to the open spaces, I 
visited the Mosque of Ishrat Khan. Its tiled glory of a 
few years before now lay a shrunken mass of bricks. 
Beyond the town, on a barren slope, there stands the 
tomb of Daniel, a slab long and low; tradition holds it 
to be ever-lengthening, and they worship here as at a holy 
place. Nearby is the Shah-i-Zindeh, a congeries of 
rock tombs of the ancient kings, embellished in tiles by 



THE MAHOMEDAN EAST 235 

Timur, and these, set upon the desert's side, and of low 
structure, still flash their pristine beauties. Citywards, 
is the immense mausoleum of Bibi Khanum, the beloved 
wife of Timur, built as only he could have built it, 
now in ruins. 

And here is the tomb of Tamerlane himself, where he 
was laid in ''an ebony coffin, wrapped in linen, embalmed 
with musk and rose water/* A block of black jasper 
seals it. Over it there rises an immense dome of tur- 
quoise blue, with richly tiled walls. A tiled minaret, a 
thing of the highest beauty, stood tall and slender be- 
side it, but that like the rest has gone. Some day the blue 
dome too will fall crashing down, and Timur's peerless 
capital be levelled with the dust. 

The tiles of Samarkand, the tiles upon the desert tombs 
of the Imams, in their beauty like nothing on earth, 
come from the Persians of old. These men were of a 
race who had worshipped the sun ; their sense of deep and 
pure colour was not a fortuitous thing. In the northern 
hills of Persia, lying in its matrix, the turquoise has \y 

ever been found. The early potters sought to repro- 
duce its rich blue in their tiles, and by the use of copper 
in the firing were able to do so to perfection; a deeper 
blue being derived from mixing cobalt. The turquoise 
domes throughout these lands — on some great mosque, 
or village shrine, or upon tombs scattered over the waste 
— are numbered by hundreds; but this one rising over 
Timur's grave I hold to be the most glorious of all. 

On a Friday, entering the Mosque of Tila-Kar in the 
Registan, passing through to the tiled courtyard behind, 
I came upon the Sarts of Samarkand at their prayers. 
Some thousands of men, in their brilliant gowns, knelt 
upon their praying carpets, swaying in long rows to and 
fro, while the mullahs cried the prayers in a high pitched 
voice. The sky was blue, all the walls of the mosque 



236 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

and the courtyard sparkled, the men upon their carpets 
became one swaying mass of colour, and I knew that here 
in Central Asia I was looking on a scene matchless in 
the world. 

At the port of Karachi, I awaited a steamer for the 
Persian Gulf. There was a day to spare, and on that 
day I drove across the Sind desert to Magar Pir. The 
road — the main road inito Beluchistan — led over low 
rolling hills, and under the mellow sun, in the so balmy 
autumn air, the joy of living was upon me. A trotting 
camel, with bells, overtook me. Two men rode her, and 
between them, all gayly decked with ribbon, sat a placid 
kid. "O happy land of men and goats !" I cried, gulping 
the balmy air — and the camel passed over the next rise, 
going fast in her stride. 

An hour later I came to the Pir — an enclosed pool 
beside a shrine. Its sacred waters seemed fouled, as 
after a struggle, and the king magar, a crocodile ten 
feet long, lay distended on the sand. The trotting camel 
stood nearby, browsing forage. The two men lay in 
the shade of palm trees, asleep. And the bedecked kid, 
an appeasement to the God of the Desert, was gone into 
the pool for ever and ever. 

Near the head of the Gulf, a fine river enters the sea. 
They call it Shatt-el-Arab. It bears upon its bosom the 
waters of Tigris and Euphrates, which come together 
eighty miles from its mouth, and of the Karun, flowing 
south out of Persia. A few miles up Shatt-el-Arab, lies 
Busrah, a considerable port, metropolis of the world's 
dates, and of the liquorice root. Up-stream from Busrah, 
the date groves begin to thin out, the ploughed lands dis- 
appear; soon there is nothing but the stark desert. Here 
is the junction of Tigris with Euphrates. We sail up 



THE MAHOMEDAN EAST 2S7 

Tigris, to the northwest, into Mesopotamia. The flat 
desert stretches far as the eye can reach. Many camps 
of Bedouins are seen, with their asses, and the fat- 
tailed sheep, squalid and primitive. To the north lie 
the Persian mountains, tipped with the early snow. 

We have travelled up the river some hundreds of miles. 
Here, from out a date grove, rises a turquoise dome. 
It is the tomb of Ezra, the prophet; and when the boat 
has drawn into the bank, Mahomedans, Jews and Chris- 
tians pass outj and worship together. Yonder, out over 
the desert, rise the stately ruins of Ctesiphon, the palace 
of King Darius. Small settlements of Chaldeans are 
passed. They are of a Semitic cast, although Christians, 
dwellers hereabouts from the dawn of things. Their 
young women, appallingly fat, wave from the banks. 

Here at last, after six hundred miles of this tortuous 
waterway, is the City of Bagdad, lying on both sides 
the Tigris, with its bridge of boats, and all around 
it the desert. Many palm trees rise above it, and slender 
minarets, so that you look for the ancient Bagdad of 
romance. But that you shall not find; nothing but a 
tawdry place, bazaars of European goods, a glamourless 
city, made stinking by its many Jews. By night, when 
the moon rises over the palms, and its silver beam lies 
upon the river, you may recover the illusion; but it will 
vanish with the day. 

Upon the southern bank, a few miles up stream, the 
swarming suburb of Kazimain clusters around a famous 
shrine. Gazing through its gateway, into the courtyard, 
I saw a splendid double mosque, its walls of tiled mosaic, 
its domes and minarets of beaten gold; and then the 
fanatic Shiah crowd hustled me away. Two of the 
Imams lie buried here. 

Across the southern desert from Bagdad, lying upon 
the banks of a dry channel of Euphrates, are extensive 



238 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

ruins. Baoylon, greatest city of the early world, stood 
here ; but built only of brick, and now melted into a shape- 
less mass. Two miles up the channel, a smaller mass 
denotes the Tower of Babel. In Babylon, Nebuchad- 
nezzar's gateway of victory still stands, decorated with 
the plaster reliefs of animals, and the archaeologists 
showed me the ground plan of his palace; but all else 
seemed melted and shapeless. Jackals lurked in the ruins, 
blue pigeons flew from cave to cave, and where there 
had been fertility, lay the wide and stark desert. 

Over this desert, wending across these Mesopotamia 
flats day after day, come small processions in a never- 
ending stream. Here is a group of horsemen, pilgrims 
from Teheran, shrilly singing as they near their long 
journey's end. Here is a train of pilgrims on foot — 
Persians too, rallying round a green flag. Here are 
veiled women riding asses, the men following afoot. 
Vehicles cross the desert, and old folk in litters, or 
astride emaciated horses, their faces strained and hectic. 
Many of these little processions are funerals, with the 
sewn-up corpse upon a litter, or lying across an ass; 
they come from over Northern Arabia, from the confines 
of Persia, from India, from all Islam — and they con- 
verge upon yonder holy desert city, whose golden minarets 
are shining across the plain. 

It is Kerbela — the desert battlefield, where Hosein 
fell and the flower of the Shiahs — Kerbela the shrine, 
holiest spot in the Shiah world. Date palms rise about 
it. A canal from the Euphrates brings in water. For 
miles around the town there are graves. These funerals 
have been wending hither for a thousand years, and 
millions of the old have come to die here in sanctity. 
In this holy city there is a zonal tariff for burial. The 
graves of the rich are dug near the shrine, and yield a 



THE MAHOMEDAN EAST ^39 

princely income to its guardians; the poor and the un- 
considered are laid far out in the desert. 

An Arab city this, with many Persians inside it, and a 
continuous pilgrim traffic: a fanatic city too. Many a 
muttered curse followed me; and did I but dare stand 
before the doors of the holy courtyards, an angry crowd 
threatened violence. From the housetops, secretly, I 
looked down upon the courtyards, and saw those mosques 
which are the tombs of Hosein and Abbas. The walls of 
each were a-sparkle with Persian tiles, with mosaic, and 
arabesque, and holy Koranic scroll; the domes and the 
minarets were coated with beaten gold. In the courtyards 
there was hubbub, a great coming and going; dervishes 
stood there crying aloud, beggars lay covered with dread- 
ful sores, a trade was doing in food and reliquaries; 
while many cast themselves upon the ground to pray. 
Across the housetops rose the palm trees; and beyond 
the city lay the many, many tombs. At the sunset, as 
I sat there on the roof, the muezzins came out on the 
golden minarets; as they raised their thin and tuneless 
chanting, a great silence fell upon the courtyards, and a 
strange glamour upon the Arabian desert. 

When I left the Gulf, and left Islam, the steamer, a 
smallish boat, was loaded from end to end of her deck 
with Arab ponies, for sale in the markets of India. They 
had been driven down to the Gulf from Mosul, eight 
hundred miles up Tigris; and a wealthy Arab horse 
dealer, his servants, and a round dozen syces were with 
them on the boat. We slept on deck, shoulder to shoulder, 
hardly clear of the horses' hoofs; and each morning, while 
it was yet dark, a good hour before the dawn, I saw these 
horsey Mahomedans rise, orient themselves, and softly 
chant their prayers. They lay down again, and slept ; but 
by sunrise their cooks had prepared the morning meal, 



240 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

and master and men squatted round a pile of rice, stained 
yellow with saffron, and a stew of mutton, floating in its 
fat. These being despatched, bowls of water, with nap- 
kins, were brought, fingers were washed, cups of strong 
Arabian coffee handed round, and all lay luxuriously 
back to smoke. 

This hour before dawn is a sol^im and a wonderful 
hour throughout Islam. There are the shrill cries of 
muezBins at sunrise, and at that moment, especially over 
the desert, strange and lovely effects cross the sky. But 
it is this full hour before the dawn, this period in the 
blackness of the night, w^hen wanderers find themselves 
nearest Islam's soul. 

At this hour, over these far-flung lands: in the small 
towns of Algeria and Morocco, out on the Sahara, in 
Damascus, on the wooded hillsides of Asia Minor, in the 
foetid bazaars of Turkestan, in the valley of Kashmir, 
in the caravanserais of Persia, and in the sacred places of 
Arabia itself, holy men arise from their couches, and 
seeking the housetops, or other open spaces, turn Mecca- 
wards. 

And from many a mouth, presently, arises a chanting, 
high and thin, in a key the darkness cannot discover; so 
thin! so tuneless! yet carrying far out over the house- 
tops to the desert beyond. There is something deeply 
mysterious in this holy crying. In the night, at Kerbela, 
it brought me rushing to the roof. In the vaulted bazaar 
of Bagdad, at three in the morning, I came upon a blind 
man — a beggar, alone, deserted even by the pariah dogs 
— who sat on the ground singing. He sang without tune, 
without rhythm, in a pitch of voice till then unimagined 
by me; and as his chant went reverberating down the 
dark vaults, I shook with horror and with joy. 



CHAPTER XV 



INDIA 



The monsoon, which had blown so strongly from 
May to August, was over. The sea now lay in oily calm, 
and steaming through the hot, moonless night we cut 
the water with hardly a ripple. The ship's bells, fore 
and aft, had struck midnight. 

My mattress had been carried up from below, but on 
this last night of the voyage there was to be little rest 
for those who slept on deck. Belated revellers held the 
smoking room till after one o'clock. Even as they left, 
the serang was whistling, and soon an endless stream of 
lascars began to file past with the mail bags. By three 
o'clock a light showed on the port bow, and after a 
time a second light, red, and low down. Presently a 
man was calling the lead, and by four we were going dead 
slow. The telegraph rang in the engine room, a voice 
called from the bridge, and in the darkness the anchor 
rattled overboard. 

Then these noises of the night died down. The mail 
was stacked — thousands upon thousands of sacks — the 
lascars were gone from the deck, the engines were at 
rest; for two hours now, in the silence, I lay down and 
slept. 

And then it was dawn — dawn in the estuary of Bom- 
bay, with the long wooded strip of Colaba running out 
to sea, a grey mass of shipping, the misty buildings 
and domes of a city. In the South and East, far over 
the water, range upon range of hills came to life. Against 

241 



S42 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

the nearer horizons, as the hght strengthened, scattered 
palm trees stood out, the undulations of the slopes took 
on shape; but the further ranges seemed part of some 
far remote country. A fleet of fishing boats already 
sailed from this country, making for the op^n sea ; while 
even as I watched, craft put out from Bombay, from 
Elephanta I land, and from all about the estuary. The 
sun now rose in fiery gold. 

Several lighters, for the mail and for the parcels post, 
ranged alongside the steamer, and in these, for their 
loading, stood some hundreds of brown men. Thin and 
shrivelled, w^earing only loin cloths, these were of the 
ruck of India, low caste Hindus, doomed by their gods, 
Krishna and Kali, to a life of toil. Their heads were 
mostly bare — yet what was stm or sweat to them ? Per- 
sonality they had none; their effacement, as they stood 
together in the lighters well, was clear to see. 

Under the scorching sun, I landed on the Ballard pier. 
I was in India! This was the sixth time, yet her glamour 
lay upon me as it had ever lain. I recalled Benares, 
Lahore, Jodhpur, Trichinopoly; the Taj, Mount Abu, 
Chitoor, Amber and Fathepur Sikri ; the lake at Udaipur, 
the rhododendrons in the Himalayas, the sunrise over 
Kinchinjunga, the ride out of Peshawar to the Khyber 
Pass, the Jhelum River in Kashmir; I thought of jour- 
neys into the mofiissil, of tents slept in, of serv^ants softly 
waking me, of bh-eestis discharging their goatskins for 
my bath; I thought of pipes playing and drums throbbing, 
of the creaking of wells, of the crooning of kites, of 
the betel nut vendors under banyan trees, of the colour 
in a Rajputana crowd. I thought too of all her under- 
lying horror; of the deadly squalor and misery, the 
emaciated and casteless, the merciless money lenders; of 
sallow Eurasians doomed to the isolation of their own 
class, of the torture from mosquitoes, the stenches in 



INDIA 245 

a million huts, the stifling nights, the dead carried on 
bamboo poles to the burning; more than all I thought 
of the heat, of this morning's scorching sunrise, of to- 
morrow's, of a land which had not cooled since the be- 
ginning of time, of the sun-curse which lies upon India 
for ever and ever. 

This was our holy ground too. Here had come the 
pick of our race, soldiers and civilians, for generations. 
Here our national character was being moulded. How 
well I knew these things ! My ancestors had come out 
to the Presidencies for a hundred years; my mother 
had been born here; this land had affected my very 
blood. 

Then I passed into the crowded streets, into the 
throng of Bombay ; where a hundred races go outwardly 
brilliant, inwardly ravening; where, in the great bazaars, 
silver and gold and pearls are hoarded, and men live like 
rats; where motor car jostles bullock cart; where those 
dead of the plague are carried naked, or sewn in white 
muslin, to the burning; where Parsi Towers of Silence, 
vulture circled, look down from Malabar; where the old 
trees cast quiet shade on Colaba, and the wide waters 
of bay and estuary sparkle in the sun. 

Upon the vast face of India there is hardly a spot so 
venerated as Puri. This holy place, near the shore of 
the sea, was a shrine in dim antiquity; and when, a 
thousand years ago, they set up here the temple of 
Jaganath, Puri's sanctity was sealed for evermore. Hither, 
through the centuries, have journeyed holy men and 
pilgrims, and each year, as the festival of the god comes 
round, at least one hundred thousand Hindus resort to 
his shrine. 

The temple lies within high walls. Hewn lions guard 
the four entrances; crouching elephants of stone, small 



544 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

shrines, and sacred bo-trees line the flights of steps 
which lead up to the holy place. An infidel like myself, 
standing by the gates, may see these; but the mystic 
rites, the obscene carvings, the strange music, the 
rhythmic swaying of the nautch girls, and the daily and 
nightly toilet of the god, are for the shaven and pallid 
priests, the monks, the novitiates, the army of temple 
attendants, and the pilgrims who swarm up the steps and 
pass out of sight. 

At the great shrines of the world I have always found 
the vilest men, and in the crowd standing about the 
temple of Jaganath there were most evil faces. But it 
must be said for these Hindus — ^these Uriyas of Orissa — 
that numbers of both sexes were physically splendid, 
and the faces of many in that crowd frank and charming. 

Before the main gate was stretched a fakir, with tight- 
closed eyes. He lay on sackcloth, he was smeared with 
ashes, he would lie there rigid perhaps a week; and the 
pious, as they passed by, dropped a farthing in his bowl. 
Here were the money changers, the sellers of flower gar- 
lands, of rice and sweetmeat offerings for the god. Booths 
stood all around, catching the pilgrims' eye, and one 
saw a steady trade in local trinkets, in reliquaries, in 
sacred literature, and in garish prints of the shrine. 
Troops of monkeys, clansmen of the god Hanuman, lined 
the high temple walls, springing thence to the branches of 
the peepul trees ; flights of pigeons descended upon those 
who bestowed grain, and the sacred humped cattle, pure 
white, and nosing all that was similitude of green food, 
passed from group to group. Somewhere a drum throbbed 
— a solitary drum ; but on the great day of festival drums 
and pipes are playing without end. On that day, amid 
the emotional ecstasy of the pilgrims, a procession de- 
scends these steps, and the god Jaganath (whom some call 
Juggernaut) is borne to his car. He is a log of wood, 



INDIA ^45 

crudely carved in man*s image. His chariot is forty- 
five feet high, rides on sixteen v^heels, and is joyfully 
dragged by four thousand two hundred men of the sur- 
rounding community. 

The god is drawn to his country house, a mile distant, 
and after a week is drawn back through dense crowds 
to his temple. Police guard the route, and it is many 
years now since his chariot wheels took a human life; 
nor has another royal Hindu, dying, again willed a 
Koh-i-nur to the shrine. These as may be : but the god's 
prestige remains as of yore; it is a poor year for the 
temple when the high priest of Jaganath fails to take in 
twelve lakhs of rupees. 

A mile away from the temple, the Bay of Bengal lay 
sparkling in the afternoon sun. Here was a long stretch 
of sandy beach, a village of fisher huts, and a strange 
race of people fishing. Than the finer Uriyas, these 
were a lower race altogether ; they seemed casteless — non- 
Hindu. One saw that the temple, with its rites, meant 
nought to them, but only fish, and fishing, and the long 
pulling in of the nets. 

This afternoon there was good fishing. There was 
great activity along the beach, and presently there came 
a net toward the shore leaping with life. This was 
a Sunday; and on a Sunday, sixteen years before, on 
just such a beach, Indians had dragged in another net 
that leapt. That was outside Durban; where I counted, 
for the one haul, twelve hundred fine Cape salmon. Then 
my thoughts went back to Africa, and to long reverie 
of the days that were gone. . . . When I rose up 
from the sand it was dark, and the fishers were gone from 
the beach. 

A night in the train from Puri, skirting the coast of 
Bengal, and I found myself in Howrah; Calcutta lay 



246 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

over the Hooghly. A great bridge thither, and an end- 
less stream of people passed over. From the bridge 
one saw many ocean steamers at anchor in the stream. 
Small craft lay massed round them, and tug boats, their 
syrens blowing, towed the laden lighters to and fro; 
distant thickets of masts showed further down, and a 
very welter of native shipping. 

Just above the bridge, en the Calcutta side, were the 
bathing ghats. It was high tide, and a thousand Hindus, 
caste-marked on the forehead, stood waist deep, laving 
themselves, washing mouth and teeth. Endless ware- 
houses were to be seen, and upstream and down the 
high chimneys of the jute mills. Jute was the biggest 
industry here. It had made Calcutta second city of the 
Empire. Holding a world monopoly, they shipped the 
raw material to Dundee or Hamburg, and the milled 
article, gunnies and the like, to the ends of the earth. 
But Calcutta had much more than jute. This low-lying, 
riverine city — "power on silt" — was the export centre 
for a dozen world staples. A hundred and fifty miles in- 
land were the Bengal coalfields, fed by several railways ; 
train loads of coal for export came rattling into Howrah 
day and night. There was tea. From Darjeeling, from 
Assam, from all the Himalayan foothills, came thousands 
of tons, neatly packed in 80 lb. boxes, and many a steamer 
sailed out laden with tea to the hatches. There was 
rice — a great staple — and grains, and oil seed. There 
were hides, and indigo, and shellac, and opium, to say 
nothing of the immense imports ; and seeing these things 
I wondered at Calcutta's vast shipping no longer. 

A mile below the bridge, on the city side, lay a great 
park. This was the Maidan, two miles long, an expanse 
of green turf set aside in the long ago, now all sylvan 
with old trees, and the glory of Calcutta. To the Maidan, 
in the early mornings, came Mahomedan grooms with 



INDIA M7 

their horses, a Hindu dairyman with many cows, a shep- 
herd with a flock of goats, lusty young British cycHsts 
out for a sweat. Here, when the sun was high, came 
mild, spectacled strollers, like Parsis, and plump hahus, 
to sit in the shade and talk, gardeners from the municipal 
flower beds, to rest, and the sad out of the great city, 
to cast themselves down and sleep. Here, in the cool, 
came sportsmen; young Eurasians, with bat and ball, 
talking a strange English, the members of a stylish 
British tennis club, playing on lawns set apart, teams 
of Hindu cricketers fantastic in their muslin skirts, or a 
crowd of soldiers, to witness regimental hockey. 

Set about the M^idan are the statues of viceroys and 
famous soldiers. Facing Government House is Lord 
Lawrence, and near him Canning, queller of the mutiny. 
Curzon and Dufferin are far out, Napier and Outram 
too, and Lord Mayo, who was stabbed dead as he set 
foot on the Andaman Islands. But I saw no statue 
to Warren Hastings, and it is only now, in the garden of 
Belvedere, that the British community have raised a 
statue to Clive. 

From Calcutta to the sea is eighty miles. The channel 
for big steamers is ever-shifting and treacherous, so that 
they only pass up and down Hooghly on the flood-tide. 
The coast here, for some himdreds of miles, is delta. 
Thickly muddied with the converged flow of Hooghly, 
Ganges and Brahmaputra, the waters of the ocean are 
shallow far out. 

Northeast of this silting sea is Chittagong, an hour's 
steaming up a river, whence I took the train into Assam. 
Here was a country greener, fresher than Bengal, with 
a heavy rainfall, luxuriant rice lands, vast backgrounds 
of jungle. Next day it was all jungles, the train high 
in the hills, the air noticeably chill, and the few natives 
about of a Thibetan cast. The night closed in with 



^48 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

gusts of rain. Morning of the third day, forty hours 
out from Chittagong, had brought us near the northeast 
corner of India. By analogy with yesterday, we should 
have been high up in mountains, amid cold and rain, 
making for God knows where. In reality, the sun was 
sliining, the air mellow, and the train crossed a low-lying 
plain. Cleared of the pristine jungle, this land was 
planted mile upon mile with tea; coolies from Central 
India picked it, and one saw British planters pass from 
gang to gang. 

Presently the train came to the bank of a wide, sandy 
river, where it finally stopped. A native town lay close 
by. Beyond it, along the river front, stood the bungalows 
of a British cantonment, and of civilians and planters, 
set in an expanse of green turf, amid the finest old 
trees. Across the river, on whose broad sands lay many 
herds of cattle, rose a great forest. It stretched back 
seemingly thirty miles, to a mountain range, itself forest- 
clad, running East and West far as the eye could see. 

The settlement was Dibrugarh. These mountains were 
the foothill range of the Eastern Himalayas. The river 
was the Brahmaputra, coming by mysterious, unknown 
gorges, not so far from here, out of the Abor country 
and Tibet. The whole panorama was enchanting. In 
this dry, cool weather I rated Dibrugarh the finest spot 
in India, and these nearby tea gardens the Elysian fields. 

But I was not here to tarry. A river steamer was 
to sail for Calcutta at dawn. She lay moored below 
Dibrugarh, beside trees, and I went abroad her to sleep. 
The night air was cold, yet a mist had risen in the trees 
to half their height, had gathered up its skirts, and now 
lay around the grove as a white girdle. The moon came 
up over the corner of India, and in her train swept fan- 
tastic cloud shapes out of Tibet. I looked again, and they 
were gone; where they had been, wisps of cirrus now 



INDIA 249 

floated, wonderfully high. The forest beyond the river, 
and the far mountains, stood in dear light, and a beam 
of silver lay on the glassy water. 

At this moment, invisible to me, some native played on 
a reed. His notes were limpid, his cadences swift and 
delicate, and presently it seemed as if all the night bent 
to listen. His theme was a minor, immemorial to this 
land ; yet borne on vibrant ether, it struck the moonbeam 
into a myriad fractures, and the waters of Brahmaputra 
danced for joy. His enchantment lay on him a few mo- 
ments only, then he ceased ; but his music had been added 
to the magic concomitants of this night. 

For several hundred miles the river flowed nearly due 
west. Still lay that dense forest along the north bank, 
still beyond it rose the distant hills. The hills, forest 
clad, were always blue. South of Bhutan, one looked, 
and behold! a white range towered in their rear. Near 
the village of Tezpur, tea planters were settled north of 
the river. One spoke of them as unsesthetic folk, sunk 
in polo, yet, had they been so minded, there was a view 
of blue mountains, and white, rising in perspective behind 
green bamboos, that one might gaze upon for ever. 

And then the river turned due south, leaving moun- 
tains and forests behind, heading into the heart of Ben- 
gal. The waters widened, often to a mile or more, and 
on the yellow sandbanks, in the hot afternoon sun, croco- 
diles lay basking. Wherever one looked now was a vil- 
lage. Thousands upon thousands was the tale of them. 
Their people, owning all the land around, tilled from 
morning to night; and I realised the meaning of these 
peasant communities to India. 

The village always lies in trees. Around the huts may 
be plantains, cocoanut palms, mangoes or bamboos ; some 
larger grove will be close by, and dotted over the plain 
are patches of thick jungle. The best of the village 



S50 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

land is given over to rice, which springs up emerald 
green, and by harvest is yellow, but the grazing land 
may often be clean turf, wooded like an English park. 
If away from running stream, a draw-well serves the 
village ; but there are few without some tank or waterhole, 
where the grown men and women bathe or wash their 
clothes, the children disport themselves, and the working 
buffaloes lie in mud and water up to their snouts. There 
is plenty of bird life about. At the dawn crows cry 
harshly. Ever bold and daring after scraps of food, 
they are yet as nothing to the kites, with their crooning 
whistles, who swoop down in the twinkling of an eye. 
The ticke^ter bird perches on the backs of the cattle, 
ringdoves coo in the trees, the kingfisher flutters by, 
flashing his blue sheen, the green parrots, with their quick 
cries, are constantly on the wing. Small squirrels share 
the branches with them, and in the trees about the water- 
hole frolic a troop of monkeys. 

At dawn the village stirs. The dogs are about, mangy, 
and of that dirty yellow that is pariah. Smoke rises 
from the first cooking. Before sunrise the men have 
yoked up the ploughing oxen, leading them to the rice 
lands. The milking cattle and the goats, or it may be 
the fat tailed sheep, are driven to the grazing by boy 
shepherds, and the low-caste women go out in search for 
fuel. If the village is a large one, a market is held. 
Piles of rice and grains are set out, and there are sellers 
of ground nuts, chilis, fruits and sweetmeats. Most 
frequented is the seller of betel nut. For half a farthing 
he will supply the smooth, veinless leaf, the nut, and 
the pinch of moistened lime, which are rolled up together, 
placed in the mouth, and chewed for hours and hours. 
All the people of India, men and women, chew the betel ; 
so that their teeth become black, their mouth cavity a 



INDIA 551 

horror of red, and their spittle, which they squirt freely 
about, a thick vermilion. 

One had not realised the affluence of these Bengali 
peasants. The land is their own, the flocks, the stacks; 
there is running water too, with fish for the catching, 
and seasons that may be relied on. There is time and to 
spare for a day's holiday, or a wedding in a nearby vil- 
lage, and a fair, or some religious festival will draw 
a brightly dressed multitude. There are some who own 
their ekka, drawn by a trotting bullock, and many have 
a buried store of silver rupees. Greatest value of all 
are the ornaments of the womenfolk; the hoarded gold of 
India in these is beyond compute. 

At sunset, the day's work ended, village elders assemble 
upon some patch of sward. This will lie beneath a 
spreading bomyan, and as talk and argument are the Ben- 
galis' birthright, there will be no lack. In a town — in 
Dacca or Barisal, or Khulna — in these days, there would 
be much diatribe against government ; but not so here. In 
his heart the villager is for the sahib. The British have 
brought him peace, protection of property, a fair market, 
and no interference; that the Brahmin, the fat babu, or 
bania, talk and promise as he may, would bring him 
these, he thinks by no means certain. And so the villagers 
eschew politics, and talk of what concerns them more. 
First, and most serious, is the malaria. They have heard, 
these many years, that malaria can be stamped out. So 
say the sahibs, yet they, the villagers, continue to suffer 
and to die, just as they did before. Then they talk of 
their flocks, of the better price for hides, of the increasing 
cost of food, of a nearby festival, and of the coming 
monsoon. 

It is now well into the dusk. This has been a breath- 
less day, and the huts lie in an acrid pall of smoke and 
dust. Strange smells from the cooking hang about, and 



252 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

the unpleasant reek of men and animals rises. About 
this time the flights of rice-birds pass overhead; graceful, 
white things these, like the ibis, they fly with a slow 
movement into the night. Now, too, the frogs croak 
loudly, there is the droning of multitudinous crickets, 
and the mosquitoes, flying up from the tank, add their 
midget hum. Despite the dogs, the jackals are at hand — 
all round the village ; in the confines they are crying like 
a lost child, and will soon emerge from among the 
trees. It is now very dark. The children lie asleep in 
the huts. Some of the men, their heads wrapped in a 
shawl, are laid upon stretcher bedsteads in the open, but 
mostly the people spend the nights behind closed doors 
and in foul air. A drum beats in the village, alone and 
solemnly, and with it, presently, rise the minor notes of a 
reed pipe ; but these only for a few moments, leaving the 
night to the cries of the jackals. 

The day has been reasonably happy, and the villagers, 
untouched by modem subtleties, lie down in contentment 
to sleep. If needs were, these humble peasants would lie 
down in contentment to die. 

Brahmaputra meeting with Ganges, the two rivers flow 
as one to the delta lands, where they become los^ in a 
maze of channels. Threading these tortuously, the 
steamer passed from out the fertile village country, into 
the jungle of the Sundarhuns. In this wild and lonely 
stretch there are no human beings for a hundred miles; 
but the steamer's searchlight, turned suddenly on by 
night, may flash upon a tiger on the bank, or upon wild 
boar swimming the waterway. To me, who sat patiently 
till midnight, no beast was revealed ; but upon the smooth 
waters, when day broke, lay the eyes and snouts of many 
crocodiles — triangles of observation, which sank, as we 
neared them, with never a ripple. 



INDIA 253 

Through the Sundarhuns I was alone upon the boat. 
It was Christmas afternoon, and as I sat at my tea there 
entered the butler, his assistant, and the cook, spick and 
span in clean turbans, bearing sweetmeats, and a beflagged 
cake, sugared with the word ^'Christmas." These being 
set before me, an awkwardness fell upon them; but 
upon receipt of a ten rupee note they brightened, salaamed 
profoundly, and withdrew. With the low-caste sweeper, 
peering round the door, who had prepared me hot baths 
very faithfully, I dealt separately. Next day, passing 
from the Sundarhuns into the Hooghly, we paddled up 
the river to Calcutta. The voyage from Dibrugarh, of 
eleven days, had been just i lOO miles. 

In Calcutta the racing carnival had begun. The Maldan 
had taken on a fresh aspect Down in one corner lay 
the course, spacious and circular, and the people of the 
city, streaming across in their holiday colours, stood 
wedged there like a rainbow. Over against the masses 
rose the grand-stand, and in the -velvety paddock, on the 
lawn that stretched beneath old trees, moved a great 
gathering of the British, and the native gentry of half 
India. The Viceroy had driven up in state, cynosure of 
all eyes. Maharajahs were there, the cadets of many ruling 
houses, the titular princes of Bengal, and the great zemin- 
dars. Some of these were running their horses, and I 
heard them coach the white jockeys in idiomatic English. 

There were many other Indians on the lawn, men 
less highly placed. They rubbed shoulders, they talked rac- 
ing with the principal British in India ; and I learned once 
more, at this Viceroy's Cup, that the bigger the official, 
or the truer the man, the more courteous he Is to natives, 
high and low. The governor, the commissioner, the judge 
— the sahib, whoever or whatever he be — consolidates In- 
dia for us ; it is the subaltern, the captain's lady raw from 
home, the engineer's assistant, the railway employe, some 



g54f THIS WORLD OF OURS 

planters' womenfolk, and many a clerk, eager to show 
how white and British and far-removed they are, who 
often throw us back. 

One morning, as the sun lit up the golden pinnacles on 
the palace of the Maharajah, my motor car passed out of 
Mysore City. For fifty miles the road lay under banyans, 
old and stately, hanging with their shrivelled red figs, in 
whose branches there leapt and cavorted, venerated and 
fed by Hindu wayfarers, hundreds upon hundreds of 
monkeys. The peasantry were all afield, and along the 
road went herdsmen driving their cattle, their goats, and 
their flocks of brown, biblical sheep. To the South there 
lay a vast forest, where grew most of the world's sandal- 
wood ; it spread over Southwest Mysore, over Coorg, and 
over the Wynaad, where the cofifee planters of India are 
gathered. Beyond it rose the Nilgiri Hills. Upon their 
summits lie rolling, grassy downs like nothing in India, 
and beyond the downs Ootacamund, a hill-station in a 
thousand, where I had seen many of our retired people 
living in the cool. 

The car speeds onward. Now we are out of Mysore, 
and pass through the forests of Coorg. The villages have 
died out; but through the forest come many trains of 
covered carts, carriers between the coast and the interior. 
Each is drawn by two bullocks, smallish beasts, humped, 
and mostly pure white, who glance at you with extraordi- 
nary intelligence. Tended with care, they are sleek and 
glossy, and their horns, which often lie back with the 
sweep of the sable antelopes*, are tipped with ornaments. 
Between them and their Hindu drivers exists a deep com- 
prehension; in the midday hours, when they rest, when 
men and beasts lie asleep by the roadside beneath the trees, 
you will see many a black, human head pillowed on a 
white hide. 



INDIA 



.).> 



The fine looking Mysore peasants had merged into the 
inferior folk of Coorg; now I came to a village where half 
the men were of a strong Semitic cast — they might be 
almost Arabs. As I neared the coast the country opened 
out, the Arab-like population vastly increased. They 
looked to be prosperous — producers of cardamoms, of 
ginger, of cocoanuts, of pepper — which their women, sit- 
ting by the doors, were sifting. Presently we drove into 
TeUicherry, lying on the seashore of the Malabar Coast. 

From here I took the road to the South. It was now 
the hour before sunset, when that deep glamour falls upon 
India, when all her people and their domestic animals 
seem to be out in the open. Ox-carts, pony-carts, porters 
staggering under their heavy loads, passed in a long 
stream; herds of cattle ancl goats blocked the way; at 
each village a seething crowd of men and children, of 
dogs and fowls shriekingly gave us passage. Not in an- 
ger — these people were happy and contented; from the 
men I received a thousand salaams^ from the children a 
thousand nods and smiles. A serenity of mind came over 
me. My reserve, as never before in India, seemed to fall 
away. I was no longer just the sahib, grave and remote; 
as between man and man, I threw in a smile here, a wave 
of the hand there, nor had I any cause to repent it. We 
passed through Mahe, a tiny French settlement upon 
the coast, and across two rivers, where the ferrymen sang 
as they pulled; it was quite dark when we drove along 
the beach at Calicut, and drew up at the club. 

At sunrise next morning, when I looked from my win- 
dow, the ocean lay calm and sparkling. It was, I have 
no doubt, just such a morning, in May, 1498, when Vasco 
de Gama sailed in here and cast anchor, the first Euro- 
pean to reach India by sea. Along the level beach many 
fishing boats put out, and in the deeper water a number 
of larger craft rode at anchor. These were dhows, of the 



256 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

Arab type, many of them trading direct with Arabia and 
the Persian Gulf; timber, fibre and spices being carried 
thither, and cargoes of dates brought over to India. 
Arabs, in their Arab dress, and but lately come from Ara- 
bia, walked the beach. Their forebears had been sailing 
to this coast before any white man. Marrying the Mala- 
bar women, nicknamed Mopilahs, or Moplahs — the 
"sons-in-law"-— they had permeated the whole of Malabar 
with their strain; it was their Arab-like descendants I 
had been passing through yesterday. 

Further down this coast, a land of cocoanuts, and rice 
fields, and rolling jungle, lies Cochin. Its capital is built 
upon a lagoon, a backwater of the ocean, reached by a 
boat journey of three miles. It was moonlight when they 
rowed me across the lagoon, the cocoanut forests all sil- 
very, and when we had skirted the fairy-like isle of the 
British Residency, the boatmen broke into a chant-like 
song. 

But the glamour of the night waned to a dreadful day. 
Many thousands dwell in Cochm, yet each fifth man, it 
seemed to me, and a multitude of women went horrible 
with elephantiasis. It is a disease in which the legs grow 
greater from the knee down, and the foot swells to a 
shapeless mass; in which the victims drag themselves 
along with loathing, and the stranger, coming suddenly 
upon them, can hardly contain his vomit. 

Cochin is Hindu. I suppose that tens of thousands of 
her afflicted, entering their temples, have cast themselves 
beseeching before Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva, the mystic 
trinity. Not less than twenty Christian sects, too, with 
their missionaries, have prayed these hundred years for 
a surcease. In vain ! Elephantiasis is in the nature of a 
minute worm or a microbe, and it is not upon record that 
these have been exorcised through prayer. If Cochin 



INDIA 257 

waits on the old gods, she may wait for ever. But I 
name to her rulers, and to the missionaries, a New God — ■ 
Pasteur, the dead Frenchman — the founder of bacteriol- 
ogy, into whose view there first swarmed these minute 
hosts; and I assure them that if relief is to come, it can 
and will only come through one of his followers. 

Here is Trivandrum, capital of Travancore State, and 
here, down at the extremity of India, India's finest look- 
ing people. The Arab type is gone. It is replaced by 
the Nairs, a high-caste, from among whose women, 
strangely pale-skinned, the Maharajahs of Travancore 
must be bom, and by a yet higher caste — the Brahmins : 
that is to say by types purely Hindu. The Brahmins 
are in the ascendant here. The walled fort, a city within 
the city, is set apart for them; their great temple, just 
without the palace walls. I, the infidel, dared not ap- 
proach. The Maharajah, of the lengthiest Hindu lineage 
in existence, because of his lowlier Nair mother, must 
place himself under their ministrations. 

And yet, with its militant Hinduism, Travancore is the 
most Christian state in India, one-third of the people call- 
ing themselves Christ's followers. Missionaries of many 
sects swarm here — ^men and women of all sorts and con- 
ditions; and whilst these, for example, of the Belgian 
Carmelites carry neither scrip nor wallet, those of the 
London Mission ride comfortably in their motors. The 
Syrians came here early, Christianising, and at a later 
day Xavier, converting the fisher folk, who remain Cath- 
olic to this day. The new native converts are mostly 
Catholics. The Eurasians of Travancore, too, as of the 
rest of India, are overwhelmingly Catholic. The Roman 
Church lays itself out for these people, and accords them 
some social recognition; neither the British community, 
nor their churches, have ever done that. 



258 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

Rising at four in the morning to pray, living retired 
and secluded in his palace, the Maharajah of Travancore, 
through his dewan, rules the state with a rod of iron, and 
rules it well. English is the official language, which he 
speaks perfectly, as do the many high Hindu officials to 
whom he daily gives audience. 

The staple of Travancore is the cocoanut. There i^ 
large export both of coir — ^the fibre, and of copra — ^the 
dried flesh. Physically, this state's finest product is her 
people ; some pure and persisting strains have been built 
up in this comer of India. Mentally, though, I am not 
so sure. Education, here as elsewhere in India, is open- 
ing many subtle minds, and lets loose a flood of words ; 
but it is unable to discover men of action, or men of high 
character. These educated persons study for the law, 
which is the curse of India, or they enter official life. 
Once in office, a majority do not scruple to accept bribes, 
the way of the oriental from time immemorial. But the 
right and honest handling of money has become the basis 
of all modern government; and just how the educated 
Indians, with this damnable obliquity in their nature, ex- 
pect to govern India themselves, and not see it collapse 
inside a decade, I fail to understand. . . . 

I was now come to Madras, the "withered beldame*' 
of British India: a city of great spaces, and old, old 
British bungalows beneath their trees, yet a city scorched 
by the sun and withered, of teeming sltrnis, of much pov- 
erty. My vessel was come, and I drove with my luggage 
to the harbour. My servant, a man of this city, was to 
remain here. He had been a faithful servant to me, 
and now, in farewell, he bent over my hand, brushing it 
with his lips. He was weeping. I watched him, a white 
figure, walk down the road and disappear in the throng ; 
then I boarded the steamer, and presently set sail for the 
Straits Settlements. 



CHAPTER XVI 

CHINA AND COCHIN CHINA 

In the five days steaming from India to the Straits, 
you pass from the East to the Far East; from parched 
and desert-hke countries, to a tremendous rainfall, rich 
tropic growths, forests without end ; from peoples whose 
thoughts dwell much upon religion and death, to peoples 
who take life as it comes, who like to laugh and joke, to 
whom religion and the gods are vague and shadowy. 

So we come to Singapore, down among the islands 
of the Archipelago. Just one hundred years ago, the 
eagle eye of our countryman Stamford Raffles lit upon 
this island; and having made himself agreeable to the 
Sultan of Johore, he departed with the title deeds in his 
pocket. A fishing village of Malays then stood on Singa- 
pore : the rest was jungle ; but Raffles knew what he was 
about. 

Landing to-day, you enter a city of a quarter of a mil- 
lion ; Singapore has become the eighth port in the World, 
and the most strategic site, I rather imagine, in all the 
Seven Seas. Malays are the people of the region, but in 
these Singapore crowds you will scarcely see one Malay 
in twelve. There are Tamils, Sikhs and Bengalis from 
India; Arabs, Javanese, Japanese, white-suited Euro- 
peans ; but the people of Singapore, as to nine out of ten, 
are pure-blooded Chinamen. Call it 230,000 Chinese. 
Thiri: of them as living far south of China — almost on 
the Equator; yet so adapted to their new environment as 
to outdistance others, own nearly all this city, and hold 

259 



260 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

its future in the hollow of their hands. And as Singa- 
pore is but one spot out of many they frequent, clearly 
the Chinese can be no ordinary folk. 

The British, travelling in the saloon, have overrun the 
face of the earth. The Chinese, going steerage, or on 
deck, have done very much the same. The Cantonese, 
especially, are renowned cosmopolitans; a tally of the 
corpses sent back to Canton for burial, and of Cantonese 
who lie buried in every corner of the world, would as- 
tonish. 

When gold was discovered in California, the Chinese 
arrived in their thousands. When it was discovered in 
Australia and New Zealand, they appeared in their tens 
of thousands. Very many lived and died in those parts ; 
but their bodies were sooner or later sent to China for 
burial, often at a cost of a hundred pounds for each. La- 
ter, they permeated Britisli Columbia, and all the Pacific 
Slope down to Mexico; numbers, too, settled in easterly 
cities like Chicago and New York. Many thousands 
went to labour in the sugar fields of Peru, and to British 
Guiana, Mauritius, Tahiti, Samoa and other islands up 
and down the tropics. The furniture of very many cities, 
whether it be Calcutta or San Francisco, is made locally 
by Chinamen, and they seem to do the cooking and wash- 
ing and market gardening for half the foreign world. 
Excepting only Japan, they have spread over, and look 
like possessing, the Further East. They do the hard work 
of Eastern Siberia. They conduct the big business of 
Cochin China. They lie like a blanket over Siam, and 
they are slowly closing on Burma. I marvelled to see 
what they had made of Hong Kong; while from such 
bases as Singapore, Kwala Lumpor and Penang they 
have overrun the whole of Malaya, and made it to-day 
great and wealthy. Their instinct for tropical lands, 
and developing them, is as keen as our own, and nowhere 



CHINA AND COCHIN CHINA 261 

do you see their powers and mastery better displayed than 
in the island empire of the Dutch Indies. The people of 
those parts are as children in their hands. The Dutch 
ralers, taking note of this, have closed Java to the Chi- 
nese, except under restrictions, but their community in 
Java is already large and prosperous. They are the 
making of the remoter islands. Large towns in Sumatra, 
in Banka, in Borneo, are almost entirely Chinese, and 
in a thousand spots up and down the vast Archipelago 
some Chinese community is settled and thriving. 

They are tireless workers. The heat is as nought to 
them ; indoors or out, you will see them always at it ; yet 
they live vividly, and take their pleasures. They are a 
queer compound of cleanliness and filth. And how they 
breed! No such fecundity has been known in human- 
kind. Chinese cities are just spawning beds; along these 
tropical rivers where they settle, where Nature herself 
spawns so riotously, litters of children are born as it 
were overnight. 

My first impression of the Chinese at home was of 
their seamanship. I disembarked in the Chefoo roads 
in a gale ; the way sampans and small sailing boats were 
handled that day was a revelation. Aside from European 
vessels, there is immense shipping on the China Coast. 
Innumerable fishing craft put out from a hundred har- 
bours. Thousands of cargo junks ply everywhere, and na- 
tive-owned steamers, from the diminutive up to two and 
three thousand tons, are numerous. My mental picture of 
the Coast is of tossing seas ; and it is also of a born race of 
seamen, alert and reliant, in all sorts of weird craft, 
boldly riding their crests. 

Then I saw the Chinese were trustworthy. In the 
treaty ports, in Hong Kong every British bank, every 
European store and business were manned by them, and 



262 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

they fingered the cash. Even in Japan, the Europeans 
brought in Qiinese clerks, and throughout the East a 
business Chinaman's word was his bond. 

And I saw they were what the Scotch call "gutsy." 
Alone among orientals they pandered to the belly. In 
Chinese towns hucksters stood at each few yards. They 
dealt in every form of food, from pasty sweetmeats to 
giant radishes, doing a roaring trade. Retailers of 
sweet, coloured drinks, loudly calling their wares, seemed 
to ensnare each sweating coolie rid of his load, each 'rick- 
sha puller awaiting a fresh fare. The numerous eating 
houses, hung gorgeously with paper lanterns, displayed 
food in endless variety — dried and cooked fish of many 
sorts, piles of cooked rice, meat stews, vegetable stews 
— a hundred savoury messes and relishes ; while from the 
beams above hung cooked, dried ducks, baskets of long- 
buried eggs, beche de mer, dried octopus, the tit-bits ap- 
pertaining to pork, and all the other delicacies of the 
season. The eating tables, overlapping into the narrow 
streets, seemed always crowded; and with bustle, in a 
great clatter, to the music of eating-house orchestras — of 
pipes, stringed instruments, cymbals, bones and gongs — 
China fed itself. The impression was not of gorging — 
the negotiation of the chop-sticks is too deliberate for 
that — but of a series of relishes eaten with true gusto; 
these people, if a trifle less dainty in palate, were as 
human as ourselves. 

These on the material side. Of a China that is not 
material, of products of art, things of beauty — an altar 
perhaps, a temple, a gateway, the line of a roof, a vase, 
a bit of ceramic, a mandarin's robe — I had many a 
glimpse. They showed a perception as pure and classic 
as ever came out of Greece. These stood, in a degree, 
for a China of long ago ; yet for a one and only China, ar- 
tistically supreme, whose genius, I was to find, had 



CHINA AND COCHIN CHINA 265 

moulded all art and beauty throughout the Far East. 
As sailors, bankers, merchants, mechanics, miners, ar- 
tists, humourists — in a hundred capacities — the Chinese 
meet us on our own ground, where there is liking and 
mutual respect. They have strong personality, splendid 
qualities. They are peace-loving, and hold fast to family 
life. In this vast population there are sea pirates, many 
opitmi fiends, many abandoned criminals, cut-throats of 
all sorts ; there is misgovernment by officials, bribery and 
corruption in high places, even torture; but the mass of 
the people are vastly industrious, sober, right living, and 
humorous, as is known to all who accurately observe. 
That is not to say they are enlightened. They are super- 
stitious, full of vain imaginings, impervious it would al- 
most seem to true knowledge. They are utterly callous, 
and, judged by our standards, cruel. Still, there are the 
fine qualities, and the strong personality. The Chinese 
will need a Western people to see them through. For 
none so much as the British have they affinity; and I 
beg our people that they let no others usurp this. 

A host of mine at Hankow, an Englishman, was re- 
puted the best tea-taster in China. His stock in trade 
was his palate, and some forty tiny, handleless cups, and 
he earned an income many would envy. Towards eleven 
in the morning, and the cups, infused with the day's test- 
ings, being set in a row, my friend appeared. Sniffing 
first, he sipped each cup daintily as a bird, made as if to 
gargle, covered his palate with the liquor, and stood a 
moment or two^ reflective; then, swallowing hardly a 
drop, spat out. When he had come to the end of the 
line, those forty teas had been irrefutably classified; and 
I learned from him what indeed I knew already — what 
the Russians, who are the knowing tea drinkers, know — 
that China tea is the incomparable article. 



264 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

I saw a harvest on the central plain of China, and in 
the province of Honan came to vast coal beds, where a 
mining industry was springing up. Beyond the coal, in 
Shansi, there are iron deposits. These seem so immense, 
so near coal, that this part of China may one day dis- 
place Pennsylvania as the producer of steel; but not in 
our time. The empire may split first, and go to pieces. 
There may emerge five or six Chinas. If she stakes her 
future on democracy, there probably will. 

It was winter when I went into Manchuria, and for 
the first time I knew excessive cold. Had a wind swept 
across these plains, the cold had been unendurable; but 
the weather at that time was still and sunny. 

This great Chinese province was a flat land, of deep, 
black soil, eastern extension of the lengthy Siberian 
food belt. Like its big mules, the men it bred were of a 
super-type — six-footers, straight and strong; a people 
rid of their weaklings, well-to-do, each man and woman 
in fur jacket and cap. Sturdy Russian Cossacks across 
the border would rejoice in this wintry Manchu land, 
where the little brown Japs would shrivel up. But a 
food belt is a food belt ; and one saw the day they would 
all come to grips for its ultimate possession. Then I 
crossed over into Korea. 

The "Hermit Kingdom" adjoins, and was sometime 
the appanage of China, and her people are like the Chinese 
as Spaniards are like French. Physically alike, but not 
mentally : for the Koreans, slothful, hap-hazard, vitiated 
all through, were run to seed. They once had their qual- 
ities, no doubt, but I saw them now atrophied; while 
centuries of misgovernment, wholly ruining the land, had 
completed this racers abasement. 

I saw Korea as a poor and sparsely cropped land. Here 
and there, about the little shrines, stood a grove of trees. 



CHINA AND COCHIN CHINA 265 

Save for these, thriftless generations, in search of fuel, 
had denuded the country of timber and brush, and ra- 
pacity, not afforestation, had been the keynote of their 
rulers. The Korean climate is bleak, and under each mis- 
erable little house, for its warming, is built an oven. To 
feed these ovens, against the coming winter, children 
were now cutting bundles of grass on every hillside. In 
Seoul, the capital, and a walled city, Americans had in- 
stalled waterworks, tramways and electric light. In the 
North, too, they owned profitable gold mines. These con- 
cessions had been given by the Emperor, since becoming 
a puppet of the Japanese ; now it was known that nothing 
of value would be put past the people of Nippon. The 
Koreans, from the Emperor downwards, were futility it- 
self; that they were passing under the domination of 
Japan seemed to me the natural thing. 

At the Seoul Club, a glorified bar room with a billiard 
table, a strange group met together. A bare twenty fre- 
quented the place, but one and all, they drank alcohol as 
I had never seen men drink. And they were good com- 
pany. There were consuls, well read and witty ; Ameri- 
cans, in from the mines for a spree; a couple of journal- 
ists awaiting events, who abused the Korean or the Japa- 
nese Government according to subsidy; several German 
retailers, and an English merchant from Chemulpo. There 
was a Dutch- American Jew; one of the best, he was 
engineer for the palace dynamo, the only white man al- 
lowed within the palace walls, and witness of its in- 
trigues. The Emperor was now a virtual prisoner. Jap- 
anese assassins, some years before, had murdered the 
Empress as she walked by night in her garden, and now 
he too went in terror. A young Korean nobleman, Ko by 
name, came to the club. One of three known as trust- 
worthy to the Emperor, he guarded his person in turn; 



266 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

and as we played billiards together, I knew him, more 
than once, called by swift messenger away. 

If their fate was already upon the Koreans, it lay not 
far from these rollicking, mad drinkers. A few years 
later they were mostly dead. Some went suddenly, some 
in lingering disease; but it was drink took them. When 

B knew his time was come, he sent round Seoul for 

his friends. Telling them to open champagne, he was 
lifted from his bed, and pledged them right royally : this 
within an hour of his death. 

When I reached Japan I found she was full. She was 
indeed chock full and her food producers hard put to it. 
All over the land the people were in the fields by day- 
light. Each cultivable foot lay under rice or vegetables; 
all day long coolies carried out the liquid content of cess- 
pools, spreading it over the soil, and there was no waste 
at all ; yet the price of food kept rising, and there was a 
sense of pressure and futility. The Japanese, under some 
blind instinct, were breeding like rabbits. Their ever-in- 
creasing millions demanded food, lands, and outlet; and 
because these things were not, Japan was become a men- 
ace to all the Pacific. 

A decrease in the birth-rate, or tremendous wars of 
expansion lie surely ahead for these people. If their 
Emperor in his divine wisdom gives the word, they will 
breed on. If he proclaims caution, and a decrease, they 
will obey; the birth-rate checks of western civilisation, to 
this race of imitators, should come easily. The Emperor 
is still divine in the land, and loyalty to his sacred person 
a religion; these men, too, have mastered fear: at his 
absolute disposal lies their life or death. But to one 
with his ear to the ground come rumblings. Smiling little 
men still walk the streets of Tokio, but their thoughts 
are not as of yore. Even as European bowler sits hid- 



CHINA AND COCHIN CHINA 267 

eously above kimono, so Western democracy casts a 
shadow on the old, blind allegiance. An era of factories, 
too, has come, with all its horrors, while the commercial 
people are branded as not to be relied on. 

Despite her prowess, ugly internal problems face Ja- 
pan ; but the crisis is not yet. It lies perhaps some decades 
ahead. Meanwhile, at home and abroad, these people ex- 
ploit the West. Imitative, not original, they ransack it 
for knowledge. They suck our brains in science, in med- 
icine, in methods of destruction. Ten thousand notebooks 
catalogue us in minutest detail. Smiling, and exquisitely 
polite, Japan goes about her work, awaiting the day when 
we shall receive final notice to quit. 

I speak of the classes, cold and calculating, yet fiercely 
patriotic, putting Japan always first. For the masses I 
have a warmer feeling. How willingly 'ricksha pullers 
and baggage carriers worked for me, sweating, time and 
again, from every pore; all panting and breathless, their 
smiles and little obeisances, when you dealt generously 
with them, were beautiful to see! 

And the country-side is often idyllic. There are as- 
pects of it where the overcrowding, the grinding poverty, 
and the horrors that loom ahead, are forgotten, and one 
seems to stand in the early morning of the world. The 
glory of the cherry blossoms cannot be oversung. In the 
month of March they appear, so massy, so sparkling in 
the sun, as to call for tears of joy. A thousand shrines 
of the Shinto religion are placed throughout the land. 
Always set in a grove, beside running water, giant ca- 
mellia trees shed on them the petals of a thousand flowers, 
and Shintoism's nature- worship is made manifest. About 
many a shrine are set carved gateways, and the old stone 
lanterns, standing higher than a man ; and tame deer, fed 
at the hands of the pious, often wander in these sacred 
groves. 



268 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

There are heavy rains in Japan, and especially, it 
seemed to me, at night. On such nights, lying in my 
quilt on the floor of some native inn, I peered fearfully 
at the roof ; so great was the downpour that I looked for 
the frail structure to collapse. But without these rains, 
the forests of bamboo and pine had not been so green, 
nor had myriad streams rippled throughout the year. 
Famed waterfalls and lakes, too, bless the rains, as do the 
gorgeous iris tribe, growing in swamp, the wild azaleas 
covering the northern hillsides, and the sacred forests of 
cryptomerias surrounding Nikko. Shintoism itself, the 
very soul of old Japan, springs out of the rains. 

Though deep in their hearts Japanese hate white men 
— hate them for their colour, and their physique, and 
their contempt — their women do not widely share the 
feeling. Those women the foreigner is most likely to 
meet — the keepers of inns, tea-houses, shops, courtesans 
and the like — he will find mercenary ; but as a race they 
are so adaptable, so willing to please, so dainty, that the 
final impression is one of charm. Facially, there are two 
well-marked types in the women. There is the round, 
jolly, bucolic face — the wench ; and the longer and rather 
aristocratic face, lighting rarely in a smile, which can be 
very alluring indeed. Japan is blessed in her women. 

All over the East, and settled in many spots more re- 
mote, there are Japanese prostitutes — tens of thousands of 
them. For example, Singapore is no squeamish place; 
this great port and city of lusty Chinamen has its full 
share. Near the big eating houses, where the streets to- 
wards evening are crowded with men, is the prostitutes' 
quarter. The houses here are three-storied. They are 
brightly lit, making the streets light as day, and at the 
doors of each sit six or eight Japanese women. These 
are clean, nice looking creatures, wearing brilliant ki- 
monos. Their hair, black and glossy, is brushed back 



CHINA AND COCHIN CHINA 269 

• 

from the forehead, nor are their faces painted as in the 
yoshizmras of Japan. There must be a thousand Jap- 
anese women in the quarter. Many a one is there meri- 
toriously, having sold herself for a term of years to pay 
a parent's debts. She will return home some day, and 
take up her old life without losing caste. 

In this quarter are many Chinese women, also houses 
of Indian women, rather attractive creatures, who display 
themselves hung with jewels ; but here, in their own land, 
you will find but few Malays. The Malay, the most pas- 
sionate woman of all these, is the most reticent; her 
kinswoman, the Javanese, on the contrary, is the loosest 
of the loose. 

The most abandoned women here were the Europeans 
— not British born, who are not allowed here, but Rou- 
manian, Russian and Austrian Jewesses and the like, and 
at the service of all and sundry. Just as the Japanese 
woman throughout the East is liable to be slender, cleanly, 
and well mannered, so this European type tends to fat- 
ness, to drink, to slovenliness and, wheji angered, to a 
torrent of foul language. 

It was dusk when I came to the Cochin China coast. 
Off a promontory the steamer lay-to, taking aboard a 
pilot, and where red lights shone in the darkness, passed 
into the river. 

Saigon, capital of France*s colony, lies forty miles from 
the river's mouth, and it was toward midnight when we 
neared it. At the wharf, where we came to rest, several 
hundred French stood waiting. They were grouped in 
a crowd, in the electric light, gazing up at us. The men 
wore well made white suits; they looked to be jaunty 
and debonair, and many of them stroked their beards. 
The women were in evening toilette, some wearing large 
feather hats. In the background stood carriages and 



270 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

motors. The whole scene, so unexpected, looked to me 
quietly elegant, and I thought, "Saigon is full of rich 
swells." 

But it was the electric light! As I looked again the 
glamour passed. These were not rich swells at all. As 
to eight out of ten, they were in reality fonctionnaires — 
small ones at that — and the rest kept shop. They were 
as poor as rats. The womenfolk carried a quarter's salary 
on their backs ; the men were worth just about what they 
stood up in. 

I was drawn in a 'ricksha to the best hotel. Here, 
too, some disillusion awaited me. At the very first lun- 
cheon, a gigot de mouton was served, reeking with garlic. 
I sent for the manager. 

*'You call this a good hotel," I said, "and yet you dare 
use this abomination?" 

''Oui, Monsieur! It is the gigot. The finest people eat 
garlic with gigot. His Highness, the Due de Montpensier, 
comes here. He enjoys our cuisine. He owns half the 
shares of the hotel." 

I replied: "When people own half the shares, they 
have got to enjoy the cuisine. Further, I regard his pal- 
ate with extreme indifference. My food mustn't be pre- 
pared with garlic; in the matter of garlic I am uncom- 
promisingly British." And we left it at that. 

I found myself in a French town of the South. There 
was the place; across grassy parterres, the municipal 
theatre faced a bandstand, and nearby stood the Hotel de 
Ville. At street corners adjacent, their chairs and tables 
set out on the pavement, were located half a dozen cafes. 
From the centre of the town radiated well made streets. 
French houses lined these, and their avenues of tamarinds 
cast a deep shade. At the top of i rise stood the cathe- 
dral. Near it, the palace of the Gcvemor-General. And 
so one passed to extensive suburbs — well roaded, well 



CHINA AND COCHIN CHINA ^71 

lit, with charming gardens; the whole lying under such 
avenues of banyan and tamarind trees as not another 
town can rival. 

Round the French Saigon lies a considerable native 
town, where one moves among the people of the country. 
These are Annamites — silky little Chinese ; graceful crea- 
tures, polite and unassertive, who shuffle along rather 
than stride, and seem casual, quite aimless, and inordi- 
nately happy. They are Chinese stock, gone to seed in 
the tropics, become small and effeminate after many gen- 
erations. More refined, more subtle than the Chinese, 
they have neither their physique nor their personality ; the 
real Chinaman, harder and uncouth, remains by far the 
better man. 

The Annamite women seemed less aimless, and of a 
finer material. I judged them intelligent. Sexually, they 
are better looking than Chinese women, altogether more 
graceful. Though breeding freely, they retain a virginal 
slendemess, and in their little tunics and silk trousers can 
be most alluring; nor are they prudish. The Frenchmen 
have taken many mistresses from among them, and a 
number of wedded wives; but to their credit, things 
being as they are, seem mostly to marry among their own 
women, and raise a family. 

The natives seem well-to-do : the French yoke is a light 
one. The lower-class French mix freely with them ; and 
if this has engendered lack of respect for the rulers, it has 
brought about a certain liking, an asset in its way. 

There are natives of India living in Saigon — certainly 
some thousands — who have come from Pondicherry and 
Karikal, the French possessions. To the youths of Pon- 
dicherry, Saigon must stand for the great metropolis — a 
spot where fortune should be tempted; and those who 
come seem to do well. They are Roman Catholics. At 
the cathedral, once as I passed, there was a Pondicherry 



272 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

wedding. The guests were in European dress, the bride's 
father wore white gloves, a priest bowed them to the 
door, and they drove away in carriages. 

You will not see many Chinese in Saigon, but do not 
think they have overlooked it. They live in Cholon, 
three miles distant, a town exclusively theirs. Steam 
tramways connect it with the capital. A canal, too, which 
carries rice barges to the Chinese mills. Cholon is the 
country's commercial centre, and the Chinese, as usual, 
are in control. 

Cochin China is a French colony. In the past it cost 
France much money; but now pays its way, gives em- 
ployment to some thousands of French officials, and looks 
settled down to a sort of lethargy. It is a fertile country, 
and like Burma and Siam a great exporter of rice. Sugar, 
fruits and vegetable products grow freely. The cattle 
are inferior. The Annamite horses — that are really ponies 
— have no stamina. Ducks breed well; but it is the 
pigs which find ideal environment. While still young, 
they become immensely fat, and the fame of them, their 
succulence, is known to Chinamen far and wide. This 
last year, seventy thousand live pigs were shipped from 
Saigon to Singapore. In rough weather they readily be- 
come seasick. The abandonment of lady's maids on the 
Calais boat can be a horrible sight; yet it is as nothing 
to the abandonment of a cargo of fat pigs, running into 
the monsoon. 

The French have given the colony superb roads and 
bridges. Schools, lighting, posts and telegraphs, police 
and the like, are all they should be. Everywhere they 
planted avenues of trees, which have now come to glo- 
rious maturity. And there they have stopped. French 
Saigon is already old-fashioned, and half dead. After 
the slight morning stir, offices and shops close up, and 
during the heat of the day the town sleeps beneath its 



CHINA AND COCHIN CHINA 273 

trees. At four o'clock there is a little life again. Soon 
the cafes fill, and from 5 to 7 130, the absinthe hour, they 
are crowded. There is now a breath of animation about, 
motor cars and carriages come and go, and one hears the 
strains of several small orchestras. By eight o'clock the 
people have left for their homes by 'ricksha, and the 
town is again dead. 

And so the days pass. These people have no energy 
and less initiative. They cut no figure in their own colony. 
Of all the big rice mills at Cholon, several were German, 
and the rest Chinese. No mill was French, nor had any 
Frenchman a stake in the country's main industry. A 
French Company, in Paris, owns the river steamers, but 
the trade they carry up and down is seldom French. 
In Saigon there are dozens of Frenchmen who will shave 
you, who will sell you wine, or scent, or neckties, or slices 
of cooked ham; but there is not a man in the place who 
can handle the big things. It is a colony of retailers. 
Their clients are the hundreds of small officials. The 
lives of all are petty and routinal; and if they came to 
China for romance, they have surely failed to find it. 

A day's steam up Mekong River, one crosses Cochin 
China's boundary, and enters Cambodia. Presently you 
come to its capital — Pnom-Penh — upon a high bank. The 
towers and temples of the King's palace are visible over 
the trees. Pnom-Penh revolves around the palace. The 
king, now seventy-five years old, is credited with several 
hundred wives. These maintain a strict seclusion; but 
for honoured guests his dancing girls are ordered out, 
to the number of one hundred and fifty, who, sewn up 
in their scales of gold, contort and posture to the strains 
of barbaric music. 

By Pnom-Penh the Mekong branches; and following 
a tributary west, you come to an extensive lake. In the 



£74i THIS WORLD OF OURS 

dry season of the year this empties^ providing the natives 
with a vast catch of fish ; but this was still the time of the 
rains, and the lake looked to be many miles across. I 
was aboard a small river steamer, and as we sailed the 
lake at night, a light waved upon the water. We stopped. 
After some minutes a boat stole alongside, and in the 
darkness, in dead silence, four Buddhist priests stepped 
aboard. They were wrapped in their yellow robes. With- 
out a sound, they took their place with the deck travellers, 
spread their mats, and lay down to sleep. Then we went 
on our way. 

In the morning, near the head of the lake, I entered a 
canoe, was poled up a creek, transferred thence to a cart 
with trotting bullocks, and by midday had come to one 
of the greatest sights of the world. 

This was Angkor — the temple, the palace, and the im- 
perial remains of a Hindu dynasty : of a dynasty a thou- 
sand years old, planted by adventurers in a strange land, 
and flourishing greatly ; but long since swept from knowl- 
edge, leaving no vestige of script, but only these stone 
memorials, and that Indian cast in the faces of 
the people. 

Here was a vast Hindu fane in Cambodia. Let those 
who have seen Madura, rest the mind's eye upon its tem- 
ple. Take that temple, that greyish mass of the quin- 
tessence of Hinduism, and raise it architecturally to the 
nth power ; set it very high, led up to by imperial flights 
of steps ; surround it with towers, terraces and galleries, 
and terraces again ; far below, set out long, stately cause- 
ways, an enclosure a mile in length, high and richly em- 
bellished outer walls, and dig an encircling moat of two 
hundred paces. Finally, set a great forest all around — 
a tropical forest that surges, that leaps the moat, that 
bursts through the walls — and Angkor Wat, the temple, 
stands before you! 



CHINA AND COCHIN CHINA 275 

Angkor Thorn — the palace — is distant some miles 
through the forest On its grey walls, upon endless 
friezes, cohorts go marching to battle, elephants and 
spearmen meet in Homeric struggle, dancers, casting the 
lotus leaf, sway lithely before victors, and a hundred 
Brahmas, carved upon turret and dome, gaze placidly 
down. At Angkor Thom, a bijou beside the greater pile, 
there is joy for an archaeologist's lifetime; but it was 
Angkor Wat, rising high over the forest trees, that I 
returned to again and again. How the great stones fitted ! 
Where had cement been in a thousand years ? Yet these 
lay stone upon stone, groove against groove for eternity. 
Everywhere the sacred snake reared its seven heads. Ev- 
erywhere the holy trinity — Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva, and 
their myriad manifestations — revealed their mystic his- 
tory upon the walls. In the highest chamber of all — an 
interpolation, as it were,, of the Cambodians — sat a 
golden Buddha, Before him, silent and contemplative, 
knelt the four priests of the lake. On the wall, behind 
his golden halo, there seemed to hang a draping of rich 
black velvet; it was a cluster of some hundreds of sleep- 
ing bats. 

In the epic of the Chinese — the steerage and deck pas- 
sengers — I had forgotten about those in the saloon. An- 
other race of men, this last hundred years, has been doing 
things in the Far East. I sailed from Cochin China to 
Java — a week's voyage. The steamer was a Norwegian 
tramp, carrying rice. 'Her officers were Norwegians, her 
crew Chinese, we were piloted out by a Frenchman, re- 
ceived at the other end by a Dutchman ; and the common 
tongue to them all was the King's English. 

A thing like that does not come about fortuitous ; and 
thus we see, once again, that Stamford Raffles well knew 
what he was at. He laid for us the surest foundation. 



276 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

When he came home from the East, he lived In London, 
and there founded the Zoological Gardens. He died at 
the age of forty-six, and lies buried in a vault in Hendon 
Parish Church. 



CHAPTER XVII 

THE ARCHIPELAGO 

To lie in the Singapore Roads, and look out upon the 
world, is my great delight. All around, and as far as 
the eye can reach, rise islands, mountainous and forest- 
clad, broken off fragments as it were of Sumatra. Singa- 
pore, an island itself, hangs a pendant to Malaya, whose 
outline can be seen yonder. Never were such Roads. 
Bounded here by the city front, here by the wooded isles, 
there are steamers anchored in them to-night from every 
sea. Hundreds of Chinese junks, moored in clusters, hug 
the shore. They have brought in rice from Siam, timber 
from Kelantan, tapioca from Johore, kerosene from 
Sumatra, pigs from Cochin China, dried fish from Cam- 
bodia; I have seen them sail in with a cargo of jack-fruit 
or durians, or loaded with pineapples for the Singapore 
cannery. Eastward of this native shipping, the water 
shallows, and here, out upon piles, many seafaring Chi- 
nese have built their homes. Beyond this is no more 
water, but a great mangrove swamp, and then one enters 
a forest of cocoanuts. 

On a day that I took note of, thirty steamers carried 
the mails out of Singapore. They were bound for every 
port in the Far East, for every island in the Archipelago ; 
and as they disappeared, one by one, my thoughts trav- 
elled delectably with them. 

This one sailed to the Malay States — to Selangor and 
Perak. That was a territory I knew well ; I had but to 

277 



278 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

close my eyes, and it lay spread before me. . . . Tropic 
forests, dripping and steaming after rain; forest clear- 
ings, mile after mile, where young rubber trees wave; 
vast gravel pits — mines of alluvial tin, whence the coolies 
stagger up with their loads; fine roads, railways, pros- 
perous British planters, a great inflow of Chinese traders 
and labour: the whole under a burning sun — that is 
Malaya. The Malays, dwellers in this land, are of the 
Peoples of the Afternoon. Aristocrats, sedately polite, 
their pleasing exterior covers lack of racial personality 
— of any national will. Breeding freely, they will not 
suffer extinction; but already the rush of the new era 
passes them by. Malaya is opening up fast, making Brit- 
ish and Chinese wealthy: but where are the Malays? 
What has rubber meant to them ? What has tin meant ? 
In general terms they have meant nothing at all. Money ! 
Strenuous toil! Set a Malay behind a trotting pony — 
one of those mincing little stallions from Sumatra or 
Bali ; put up a couple of good cocks, fighting for a purse; 
hint at a scrap down the river, a trouble over a woman, 
where some blood may flow — and you may keep your rub- 
ber and tin ! 

The Malay looks an Arab with a touch of the China- 
man. Mahomedan by religion, he is not a fanatic, and 
while hard to drive, is always easily led. He is a remote 
sort of being, yet somehow sympathetic, and I think par- 
tial to us. We may make something of his race in the 
time to come; and at least we — that is, the Chinese and 
we — are making much of his country. , 

This boat is sailing for Rangoon. Soon after she en- 
ters the Irrawaddy, that city will come in view, and she 
will drop anchor off it in the stream. Upon the banks, 
sweating coolies shoulder the rice sacks, and trained ele- 
phants roll the logs of teak; these being the staples of 



THE ARCHIPELAGO 279 

Burma's export. And two miles back from the river, a 
dinner-bell rests on a table. It is Shwe Dagon, the Bud- 
dhist temple, a dinner-bell of shining gold, set among old 
trees, its golden handle rising three hundred feet into the 
sky. About it, on its great plafform, are small temples 
and shrines and golden pagodas — -some hundreds of them 
— and many Buddhas. There are the eating booths, and 
the sellers of food; candles and incense are burned to the 
gods; flowers laid at their feet; shaven priests come to 
chant, and upon the strokes of a gong all the people pros- 
trate themselves. 

In this considerable city dwell its own people, the Bur- 
mese, and a like number of the people of India; but the 
Chinese there have the personality. Rangoon is becom- 
ing Chinese, and the race is permeating Burma. They 
have come to stay ; many have married Burmese women, 
producing half-castes of a fine physical type. 

Here, too, in the Burmese, is a People of the After- 
noon. I see them in sadder plight than the Malays. They 
lie between the millstones. Hindu and Chinaman have 
met face to face in Burma. All unknowing, they already 
wage a duel for supremacy, and the Burmese — the coun- 
try's people — go quietly to the wall. But they are very 
happy, as yet hardly feeling the pinch. Gentle and philo- 
sophic, they draw their gay silks round them, light their 
cheroots, and drift lazily down stream. From so spine- 
less a people a national regeneration can hardly come. If 
it did, it would come through the women, who, however 
lax in their loves, are both competent and vital. 

This boat sails for Siam. She, too, on the third day, 
will pass up a river to a great city. The city is Bangkok, 
lying beneath old trees; canals and waterways penetrate 
it, and above the trees pagodas rise, and the roofs of 
temples. 



280 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

At the twilight, when Bangkok was bathed in violet, 
I used to lie drifting in a boat. So umbrageous was she ; 
such flamboyants in bloom ; such emerald tamarinds ; and 
about the pagodas and the temples such stately groves! 
There would come the screech of a syren from the ship- 
ping clustered in midstream; the distant cries of huck- 
sters ; a solemn gong would sound from a temple. Then 
the night would fall like a thunderbolt. 

This country is Burma over again. As in Burma, rice 
is the staple, and Bangkok, as place of export, second 
only to Rangoon. There are the same forests; and the 
teak, as in Burma, greatly exported. The people might 
be Burmese — almost. Just the least extra tilt of the eyes 
has come in. Their dress is similar; but the Siamese, 
men and women, clip their hair, brushing it straight back 
from the forehead. They, too, are a very happy people. 
Lazier than the Burmese, even more spineless, they will 
drift quietly down the stream. The Chinese are here! 
Bangkok's energy, all her retail trade, belongs to them; 
it is only a matter of time, and Siam will be swallowed 
with the rest. Siam has a King. His father, before 
him, was a great man in his way, who held his country 
together. He was a Buddhist like his people. A King 
of Siam is expected to marry his own sister, while his 
wives and concubines are numbered by hundreds. The 
new King is only half Buddhist; the other half is 
Christian. We may therefore be sure his women are 
reduced by fifty per cent. He was educated in Europe; 
sent to Oxford and Sandhurst ; is rather a charming per- 
son they say — more a dilettante than a King. Under him 
Siam is like to be retrograde. The immense royal family 
— graceful little men in silks, and black velvet breeches — 
have descended on it in swarms. They batten on the treas- 
ury; hold every high post; rush about in motor cars; 



THE ARCHIPELAGO 281 

build palaces in the suburbs; are altogether inefficient, 
and are paving the way for eventualities. 

I am still lying in the Singapore Roads. All these 
islands I see stretching away east, belong to the Dutch; 
the Archipelago is theirs for two thousand miles. 

These Dutch Indies are a splendid heritage. Large 
and small, they number many hundreds of islands, on 
either side the Equator; and if hot, and mostly unhealthy, 
are rich and diverse. To their surface riches are added 
oilfields ; while such dense vegetation, such a belt of for- 
ests and mountains, is found in no other sea. 

There are critics of the Dutch. They say that, except- 
ing Java, the islands lack development, their riches are 
hardly scratched, the laws tend to frighten away, there is 
a deal of corruption about, and the half-castes run the 
government. 

I have been about these islands, and I do not endorse 
the critics. One sees shortcomings — in what country are 
they lacking? — but that the Dutch government of them, 
on the whole, makes for righteousness, is evident to the 
unbiased mind. 

Development, outside Java, does lag behind. Borneo, 
Sumatra and Celebes are rich countries, crying their rich- 
ness, yet the Dutch leave them barely touched. It is not 
Saigon over again, and the petty retailers. There are 
industrial Hollanders out here, men of energy and initia- 
tive; but they are doing well in Java, and keep to their 
lay. Moreover, the policy may be right. The world can 
be over-developed — is being so. Too much can be crowded 
into our day. Too many of nature's resources skimmed 
for their cream. These countries will keep, and the 
Dutchmen of three or four generations hence have their 
innings. 

As to the question of the half-castes — well, there they 



^82 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

are! Java is certainly full of them. The officialdom of 
outlying islands is even more thickly touched. It is a 
paradox that a man of Utrecht or Haarlem, who will 
only cross tulips on approved, scientific lines, will go out 
to the Indies, deliberately marry a Javanese, and let 
merry hell loose in the shape of a large, piebald family. 

The Dutch make the best of a bad job. Seeing that 
these people are there, and fast increasing, they take them 
into society, into the schools, into the government, and in 
fact place but few disabilities in their way. The half- 
castes rank as nearly with whites as may be. It is even 
said that when olive-skinned youths go from the Indies 
to Holland, they work a havoc among the plump northern 
blondes. 

Java is one of the most densely populated islands in 
the world. It supports thirty million natives, the most in- 
dustrious section of the Malay race, whose tillage is the 
last word in tropical culture. The other islands are less 
populous. On Sumatra there is always a scarcity of 
labour, and the Javanese do not go there readily. On 
some of the tobacco plantations they employ coolies from 
British India; in the Deli district of Sumatra, I saw 
some thousands permanently settled. The natives, wher- 
ever they be, are mostly variants of the Malay stock, and 
the Malay tongue is understood all over the Archipelago. 
Despite a heavy landing tax, the Chinese are found every- 
where. The bulk of the trade, wholesale or retail, is 
always in their hands. They readily adapt themselves, 
wear the sarong, do not shy at the reistafel, chatter in 
Malay or High Dutch, and often marry a woman of the 
country. The blended progeny, as one noted in Burma, 
is quite a sound type. 

Physically, the face of the Archipelago is one of trop- 
ical forest. Wooded mountain chains traverse most of 
the islands, and on Java are many active volcanoes. There 



THE ARCHIPELAGO ^83 

arc innumerable rivers. No lands in the world have so 
many, no other race of men seems so adapted to river life. 
River or creek, they are all tidal; the waters rush in or 
out, almost as if in spate, and the skilful river folk, head- 
ing their canoes, go up or down with the tide. Mostly 
the forest and the mangrove swamp line their banks ; but 
many an enchanting glade, a rice field, a banana planting, 
a cocoanut wood, or a village beneath its trees will come 
to sight. They teem with fish, and all Malays are skilful 
casters of the net. In half an hour a man will take in the 
family's food for that day, and I have watched an ancient 
woman, with a mere hand sieve, keep the village in white- 
bait. 

In these islands, many a home is built over a river, and 
nearly all the natives' huts are set upon piles. Flimsy as 
they look, they are a snug shelter from the torrential 
rains, where the family, chatting happily, chewing the 
eternal betel in unison, retire until the sun shines. With 
their fish, their fowls, their rice, their fruits, they never 
go empty in these islands. A cheroot is always at hand, 
a canoe is tethered by the bank, a pony stands in the stall ; 
there is no hard work to speak of, no real care, plenty 
of happy talk, and a good-looking woman to tend the 
house. There is no religion here — just the merest lip 
service; but the Allah of these Archipelago Mahomedans 
is surely beneficent. 

I dallied once in Sourabaya, Java's busiest town. In 
the mornings, rising about six, I set about the day's ex- 
ercise — an hour's swinging walk. I passed beneath such 
avenues of trees as the Equator loveth, and their fresh- 
ness after the night's rain, all shot with glamour from 
the rising sun, set my feet leaping for joy. Where a vista 
opened, one could see to the uplands of the interior. From 
out these rose a mountain mass, faint and blue, where, in 
days gone by, I had peered into the smoking Bromo; but 



284 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

already the mists gathered which would hide it till another 
dawn. 

The working day opened early, and from all the um- 
brageous suburbs, ere seven o'clock had struck, humanity 
came streaming. Flights of school children led the van. 
Riding bicycles, driving behind ponies, more rarely walk- 
ing, and all in their starched white clothes, they looked 
extraordinarily fresh and clean. Fair young Hollanders 
rode by, and Javanese and Chinese youths of the better 
class — but as to the great majority — boys and girls — 
these Sourabaya suburbs were the homes of the Dutch 
half-castes. 

The bicycle stream now carried in its young persons 
— typists, shop girls, clerks, and the like — clean as clean 
could be, yet dusty. Many of them were handsome, alto- 
gether better looking than the whites; yet at twenty-five 
or thirty their brains would be dried up, their faces faded, 
their figures gone, and their femininity become bankrupt. 

Then came the heads. Under the trees they came, by 
carriage and car, in a stream that lasted an hour. Here 
one saw a leavening — almost a preponderance — of the 
big, loosely built Dutch of Holland, and their big, loosely 
built wives often sat by their side. A carload of Java- 
nese grandees would rush hooting by, but the finest motor 
cars that ran into Sourabaya town belonged to the Chi- 
nese. They swept down the road in a long procession, 
and hundreds of white-coated, intelligent-looking, and 
doubtless wealthy celestials, were carried to their busi- 
ness. In the evenings these same Chinamen drove out 
with their families. Flowery little women in bright silks, 
with the flossiest of black hair, sat proudly by their side, 
and a young family of six or eight gazed keenly out upon 
the wayfaring life of the East. 

And then I travelled to Macassar, on Celebes island, 
at two days* steaming from Java. Some twelve tiny 



THE ARCHIPELAGO 2851 

islands, lying in half-circles, dot the blue waters of the 
harbour; but these are far out, affording no real shelter, 
and the long wharf of Macassar, where ten steamers lay, 
faced an open sea. 

This was a wonderful wharf. Much copra lay piled 
upon it; stacks of ebony and rattan and fibre; vast forest 
logs; ground nuts; and all the tougher products of these 
seas; while the incoming steamers discharged upon it 
iron work and machinery, crockery, glass, cotton goods, 
liquor and the luxuries of the West. Several thousand 
natives, in thin but gaudy attire, carried the shifting 
cargoes to and fro. 

Behind it was the low-lying town; of no great area, 
but compact, crowded, a busy spot, the meeting place of 
Eastern races. Here many Javanese are settled. Here, it 
need hardly be said, are Chinese by the thousand. The 
retail importance of the place is vouched for by the num- 
ber of Bombay Mahomedans, and by many of a still 
astuter tribe — the Arab. The Arab of Arabia has spread 
throughout the Malay countries, where the commercial 
simplicity of the native, and the Mahomedan atmosphere, 
are alike agreeable factors ; but nowhere do you see him 
congregated by the hundreds as in Macassar. Then 
there are the races of Celebes itself. These grade from 
pure Malay, to ruder and more rugged strain ; and at the 
bottom of the scale one saw here and there wild and 
frizzy-headed men, as it were straight from New Guinea. 
Just one or two of these I sighted in the crowd, yet that 
gave me the key to Macassar. It is the last centre in 
Asia. It is the cleavage point, where the Far East veers 
to the South Seas. 

Over against Celebes lies Borneo, and I found myself in 
the Dutch region there, sailing up the river Barito. This 
was wide and deep; but so dense were the mangrove 



286 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

swamps, so forbidding the low, uncleared forest, so bar- 
ren the land of all human life, that I thought these reaches 
had never been sailed before. As it grew to the dusk, a 
thunderstorm broke, the rain fell in a sheet, and we 
dropped anchor for the night. At dawn it was still lower- 
ing. The mists lay reeking over the forest, and I thought 
I was come to the land accurst ; but with the hauling up 
of the anchor, and the sunrise, the mists were lifted too. 

We came at once to a tributary. Its mouth was some 
sixty yards wide, not readily discerned among the trees ; 
but the steamer, forsaking the great river, headed for it, 
and passed up at half speed. Nowhere, perhaps, does so 
large a vessel (she was 1700 tons) breast so narrow a 
stream, and with the captain's permission I stood with 
him on the bridge. As we steamed on, some canoes ap- 
peared. We carried a big wash with us, and an old 
Malay, paddling alone, was caught in it and capsized. 
For a moment the captain turned his head, shouting if 
all was well ; and that moment the native steersman, look- 
ing neither to right nor to left, ran us aground. Gazing 
up, I saw the branches of trees over my head, and with 
a squelching, almost luscious movement, we had pene- 
trated ten feet into Borneo. The steamer shook slightly, 
steadied herself for a matter of five seconds, and with a 
sort of sigh slid back into the water. In two minutes the 
incident was over, and we were again under way. A 
large V-shaped incision ^ped upon the bank, and the old 
Malay was standing in his canoe, shaking himself dry. 

Presently, where the river widened out, we came to a 
wharf, and our vessel being turned in the stream, with 
not ten feet of clear, tied up alongside. This was Band- 
jermasin, a town lying along the river for four miles, the 
largest in Borneo. 

I explored all the country around. Roads had been 
laid on the soft clay ; but for one who walked them, ten 



THE ARCHIPELAGO 28T 

travelled by canoe along the waterways. These pene- 
trated the forest everywhere, and ranged from twenty 
yards wide to channels of four and five feet. The merest 
runnels sufficed for highways, and often upon my walks, 
thinking no water near, came canoes to me stealing 
through the undergrowth. The main streams round the 
town carried a great traffic ; each Malay, each Chinaman, 
went about his business in a canoe ; bales of merchandise, 
loads of fruit and produce, passed up and down in boats ; 
itinerant vendors made the water their stance, and there 
were moving lights, cries, and the sounds of passing oars 
far into the night. Bangkok has been called the ''Venice 
of the East," but the title belongs to Bandjermasin; the 
very canoes of the well-to-do — black as ebony, carven, 
and swanlike in the prow — are gondolas to the life. 

Never was so straggling a town. Four miles along 
this river, two miles along that, two along this other, the 
little wooden houses in their compounds line the banks, 
and a hundred yards back of them stands the uncleared 
forest. Lying in my boat, I wondered where the forests 
ceased — if they ever ceased — and I speculated on some 
open and smiling hinterland. Just then a canoe shot past 
me, coming out of the interior. The paddler, an old 
woman, sat in it alone, and in front of her were piled two 
thousand ducks' eggs. Ere I had ceased to wonder at 
this, came another canoe. Another old woman was 
bringing down two thousand ducks' eggs, and Borneo be- 
came to me like the king's daughter — all glorious within. 

In the river Barito, an hour's paddling from Bandjer- 
masin, there is an island colony of monkeys. I had been 
told: "Don't go there of an afternoon, they will be 
asleep"; but when I arrived towards three o'clock, with 
some bunches of bananas, the trees became alive with 
leaping, and over sixty presented themselves. In their 
eagerness for the fruit, several swam out to the canoe ; but 



888 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

the rage of the colony, when my boatman took one cap- 
tive, was frightful. That day, along the river banks 
of the town, every young Malay and Chinaman seemed 
to be flying a kite. They were all of a purple tint; as 
we returned from the monkey colony, hundreds were 
soaring in the sky. 

Thirty miles from Bandjermasin is the district of 
Martapoera, where I travelled by road. Passing now 
through cleared land, now through the forests, the jungle 
seemed to be closing in, and I thought we were at the 
end of the world. And then it opened again, and we were 
at a river's bank, where bamboos, the sago palm, bananas 
and cocoanuts grew, and the huts were numerous. Pres- 
ently appeared a great building, with a galvanised roof, 
and issuing from it the sounds of running machinery. 

I entered, and found a large works; revolving shaft 
and countershaft spread over half an acre. Four hundred 
men sat there, in serried rows, before up-to-date ma- 
chinery ; and of all strange things in the world, they were 
cutting diamonds! More than that. In the great heat, 
squatted to their work, they wore only a loin cloth, and 
to this extent the scene was local; but these Malays of 
the Equator, these wild men of Borneo, plucked from 
their forests, were become mild and bald and spectacled 
like any European, and pot-bellied from physical inac- 
tion, and they set the facets to the whirring discs, and 
peered at them through their glasses with all the manner- 
isms of Amsterdam. It appears that not far from Marta- 
poera lies an extensive alluvial diamond field. All the 
stones found there are sold to a syndicate, who own these 
cutting works. The diamonds are not of the finest water; 
but as the Malays, and especially the Chinese, are avid for 
the cut stones, they find a ready market. Like the dia- 
mond syndicate in London, the Borneo syndicate has a 
monopoly, and is able to regulate the price to the market. 



THE ARCHIPELAGO g89 

The London syndicate is composed of wealthy Jews. The 
Borneo syndicate is made up of wealthy Arabs — astutest 
of all the world's traders. These diamond buyers of Bor- 
neo come direct from the Hadramaut of Arabia, put in 
thirty years' work, pass their interest on to a son, and 
return to the Hadramaut to die. They carry back a for- 
tune; and no doubt think of Kimberley, beside Marta- 
poera, as very small beer. 

Eastward in the Archipelago, the most considerable 
island is Timor. It is owned in part by the Dutch, in 
part by the Portuguese, and I landed at Dilly, the small 
settlement of the Portuguese. Here the Malay type has 
much deteriorated, and more than a strain of the New 
Guinea negrito has crept in. The place lay shaded under 
old trees, the wooded mountains rising a mile back from 
the shore. On grassy stretches outside Dilly, a large 
number of ponies grazed, the most noted product of 
Timor. A fine coffee is grown too; but the island is 
among the least fertile in these seas. 

New Guinea, the largest of all islands, shuts in, as it 
were, the Malay Archipelago on the eastern end ; beyond 
it lies the South Seas. Yet New Guinea is neither of 
the Archipelago nor of the South Seas. A mere channel 
separates it from Australia, and the face of Papua, or 
British New Guinea, is very much the face of North 
Queensland. As I rode inland, I passed through a dried- 
up gum scrub; wallabies fled at my approach, and white 
cockatoos rose, to screech and circle in mid-air. In so 
vast an equatorial land, nature cannot be denied, and 
across great expanses of the island stretch unsurpassed 
tropical forests; while orchids hang heavy from the 
boughs, birds of paradise hover, butterflies near a foot in 
span flash their sheen, and one sees much that is gor- 
geous and exotic. 



290 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

The people of New Guinea rank far below the races 
of the East. They are not a pure blooded folk ; one can 
see the Malay in them, and the Polynesian ; there are Sem- 
itic faces, with noses out-Heroding Herod's; and where 
the trading Chinese have coasted, there they have left 
their mark. Mostly, those I saw were of negrito cast, in- 
significant, and not physically fine; while the women's 
looks do not recommend them. 

The tribes are without number. Each has its dialect 
too, often its own language. A dialect may be spoken 
only in a single village, and in one small district ten 
languages may flourish. The tribesman's world is the 
tribe. Despite the teaching of the missionaries, and the 
chastening presence of the village policeman, he is given to 
spying out aliens from the tree tops; and when he has 
spied one, he likes to shoot him with an arrow. If he be- 
longs to a cannibal tribe, and the coast is clear, he may 
then eat him ; not for relish of human flesh, but to inherit 
the dead man's strength and virtues. 

But even among these people, life has its relaxations, 
and there are whole days — :indeed, far longer periods — 
given over to dancing, feasting and merriment. I recall 
an afternoon's walk to a village upon the shore. The 
huts stood upon piles ; when the tide was in, some feet of 
water lay beneath them, and nearby were tethered the out- 
rigger canoes. Upon the beech there stood a framework, 
hung with leaves, and one thought it might screen the 
people at their toilette ; but the leaves were the sheathing 
of hundreds of bunches of bananas which hung there, and 
I supposed the season's crop newly gathered in. Up be- 
yond the beach grew a grove of cocoanuts. 

On this afternoon a great dance was in progress. Ca- 
noes from all about the bay had come in, and merry- 
makers from other villages, and I counted six hundred 
on the beach. Physically they were a poorish lot, and 



THE ARCHIPELAGO «91 

half of them covered with a mange. The bucks, in clean 
loin cloths, their noses and ears spiked with wooden orna- 
ments, their arms tightly held in bands of plaited grass, 
carried sticks and spears. In the manner of Fiji, they 
had frizzed out their hair; but the style of Fiji, let alone 
the physique, was markedly lacking, the Fijian being the 
most debonair person in the South Seas. Their real 
splendour, and the pride of the dance, were the head- 
dresses — fan-shaped, three feet high, three feet across, 
treasured heirlooms in each dancer's family — in which 
one detected the plumage of the cassowary, of the crested 
pigeon, and of birds of paradise. 

Now the drums beat. They are lengths of hollowed 
trunks, covered at one end with the skin of the iguana, 
open at the other, and tapped with the fingers. This was 
for a dance ; but there is a different beat for a birth, and 
a death, and a battle ; and for a himian sacrifice, when the 
oven is heated to redness, and the disembowelling bamboo 
is ready to be plunged in, they can be dreadfully alarm- 
ing. To-day they beat placidly, reassuringly, and the 
dancers took their places. 

They moved forward in a phalanx, very slowly, the 
plumes waving, the dance being of rhythm more than of 
movement ; then they turned about, and came back again. 
There was a rest. The drums beat again, and the same 
slow movement was gone through. Then, from out the 
crowd of children, and dogs, and pigs, and old folk, the 
young women came forward, joining the dancing bucks, 
linking up arm and arm with them imder the waving 
head-dresses. As the drums quickened, the dancers now 
advanced, now retired, chasseeing now here, now there, 
the second couple taking the place of the first, and so on ; 
despite the sedateness of the measure, and the uttermost 
social remoteness of those who danced, it had become a 
Papuan Sir Roger de Coverley. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

THE SOUTH SEAS 

Far away in the South Pacific, I am standing beside 
a lake. The early winter's darkness has fallen, and in 
the blur I can but just see the lonely uplands which rise 
around, and the outer encircling hills, crowned with their 
primaeval bush ; the air, too, in these moments has become 
chill. 

All about me at this end of the lake — up through the 
sands of the shore, from crevices in the rocks, from out 
the thick scrub — wisps and columns of steam are rising. 
If your peer closer you will see, here a pool of boiling 
water, here a hole of boiling, bubbling mud, here again an 
incipient geyser, vomiting water, then steam, with rhyth- 
mic precision ; the air is sulphurous, the place an inferno. 

A mile distant from the lake, these boilings and gey- 
sers break out again, and here is perched a Maori vil- 
lage. Its sturdy but feckless people, home from their 
sweet-potato patches, from galloping their horses aim- 
lessly, or from a visit to the nearby township of the 
whites, make ready the evening meal ; their cooking pots 
stand in the boiling waters. 

Maoris have dwelt in this region for hundreds of years. 
In the darkness, as the water and the mud bubble, and 
the steam clouds rise to the stars, the old folk will recite 
their annals for you. Their brains are stored with 
Maori lore ; should you prove sympathetic, you will hear 
a tribal history which runs back over twenty generations, 
and begins with their coming here from distant tropical 
islands. 

292 



THE SOUTH SEAS 29S 

My vessel has arrived, and cast anchor before the dawn, 
at Raratonga, a famous island in these seas, with a his- 
tory. 

Polynesians of old were daring, experienced seamen. 
Probably a thousand years ago they explored the Pacific, 
and their settlements existed so far apart as Fiji, Hawaii, 
and Pito-te-henua (Easter Island). Raratonga was set- 
tled, and overwhelming tradition makes this the island 
whence canoes often set out on the voyage of sixteen 
hundred miles to New Zealand. Storms sweep the seas, 
and many canoes must have foundered; but a number 
reached New Zealand, and Maori tribes to this day bear 
the names of canoes which carried them thither. There 
is the Takitumu tribe, named after a canoe which jour- 
neyed from Raratonga twice. Tradition is strong that 
a ''fleet'* of canoes reached New Zealand about the year 
1350, carrying persons of quality; and the best Maori 
families trace back to this event, as our own do to the 
landing of the Normans. 

After this, these redoubtable journey ings about the 
Pacific seem to have ended. Voyages were confined be- 
tween the islands of adjacent groups, and outlying settle- 
ments of the Polynesian race became isolated. Up to 
the arrival of Captain Cook in New Zealand and Hawaii, 
no canoe had reached those islands for hundreds of years. 

It is now the dawn at Raratonga. An island some six 
miles long is revealed, mountainous, its serrated profile 
rising several thousand feet — the whole covered with 
dense forest. As the sun comes up, each tree takes on its 
own shade of green in the forest, the candlenut only 
standing out in a silvery relief — a right beauteous spot. 

Presently I am ashore. A road runs round the coast, 
and for a mile or more, in the clearings beside it, stand 
the houses of the settlement. Cocoanuts, mangoes and 
the like cast a shade over them; flowering shrubs and 



a94 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

creepers give a colouring. Among these is the hybiscus, 
in many varieties, flowering as I have never yet seen it; 
I am to know it as the peerless blossom throughout these 
islands. 

The natives go leisurely about their work; they smile 
as they give you good-day. Here is the home of a mis- 
sionary. Over there is that of another. The first is a 
Congregationalist. The second a Latter Day Saint. The 
Church of England people and the Catholics are not far 
away. Raratonga has been one of the mission centres. 
By the roadside, all round the island, under the stately utu 
trees, are the graves of the dead. These may lie singly, 
or in groups up to ten or twelve, and many are in the 
gardens, under the very eaves of the dwellings. They 
are extraordinarily florid graves, overlaid with cemented 
cairn or rectangle, often shaded from the weather by a 
galvanized roofing, while subsidiary tablets set forth the 
lengthy names and virtues of the deceased. Over several 
were erected the verisimilitude of a small house, with cur- 
tained windows, and upon others lay odds and ends of 
property, or a little food. Clearly, in their cast of thought, 
the Raratongans loved to dwell upon death, with its con- 
comitants ; and I could understand how the famous mis- 
sionary Williams, when he came here in 1821, found 
the island, theologically speaking, dropped into his mouth 
like a ripe pear. 

Not only did Raratonga welcome the missionaries ; in a 
few years she began to train and send forth her own. 
Just as the Jesuits o'i Goa, at an earlier day, had car- 
ried Christianity to Malacca and China and Paraguay, so 
the men of this forest-clad little island helped to carry it 
to Samoa, Fiji, the New Hebrides and distant New 
Guinea. But these days of fine fervour have passed. Re- 
action has set in, and the people, secure in their Christian 
reputation, yield now the mere outward observances. The 



THE SOUTH SEAS 295 

stream of teachers and missionaries begins to run dry. 
The island is now in touch with the outer world. Every- 
one rides a bicycle, and the ''pictures" have arrived. They 
are exhibited in the settlement each Saturday evening; 
and the Sunday's collections have fallen away. 

Six hundred miles north by east from Raratonga lie 
the Society Islands. As you approach these, two moun- 
tain masses rise from out the sea : to the left Moorea, to 
the right, twelve miles distant, Tahiti, the largest of the 
group. Heading thither, passing through a narrow chan- 
nel in the reef, you enter the lagoon of Papeete. 

You land upon the beloved island of Captain Cook. In 
the year 1769, when Otaheite was but a name, he was sent 
here to observe the Transit of Venus, staying many 
months. In later years, when he had become the master 
spirit in the Pacific, the discoverer of hundreds of islands, 
he returned here for food and water and rest again and 
again. 

The town of Papeete lies shaded beneath the trees. 
From a flagstaff the French tricolor is flying. Officials 
and traders, in their white suits, are to be seen, and about 
the saloons and eating houses, or parading the streets, a 
number of half-castes and natives. Many of the latter 
salute you politely. They wear a garland round their 
straw hats, or a single blossom behind the ear; this will 
be frangipani, or hybiscus, and you observe the foliage 
embowering each little wooden house is of such as these. 
There are many Chinamen about. They seem to own 
most of the shops, to control the stalls in the market, and 
to do all the hard work. I see them shoeing horses at a 
forge, and learn that a dozen of them keep motor cars 
for hire. These Cantonese are breeding with the Tahitian 
women. They are the fathers of half the children on the 
island, and the sturdier and better looking half at that; 



296 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

while the Tahitians themselves, like all the other island- 
ers, slowly die out. 

Close in behind the town the mountains rise. There is 
no cultivation upon these slopes, which are green with 
fern and scrub, but not with forest as at Raratonga. They 
rise, tapering in waves, to five or six thousand feet, but 
where the great central peak should be, there is no peak, 
but a gaping void ; some volcano has disembowelled Ta- 
hiti. The island is forty miles long, and down its slopes 
many streams of sweet water flow. Its fifteen thousand 
natives live upon and cultivate the narrow, fertile strip 
between the mountains and the sea; and upon this strip, 
and the fish of the sea, they live bounteously. 

In the lagoon of Papeete a dozen island schooners lie. 
This is the central point of the Eastern Pacific, and hav- 
ing traded in the Societies, the Paumotus, the Marquesas, 
and the other groups for a thousand miles round, they 
have brought in their copra and their shell for shipment 
by the monthly steamer to San Francisco. They will re- 
turn to the islands with trade goods, and kerosene, carry- 
ing sweet potatoes to the atolls, where no food grows 
save the cocoanut. The lagoon lies dead calm. A mile out 
the surf is breaking on the reef. Inside the reef, round 
the point of the bay, comes sailing a boat, gasoline driven, 
loaded with plantains and oranges, for to morrow's mar- 
ket. A dozen men and women are aboard. They have 
come from the village of Tautira, at the far end of the 
island, where Stevenson once lived, sailing past Taravao, 
where the girl Tehura was given to Gauguin, and Pa- 
penoo, and the leper village, and Point Venus, where there 
is a memorial to Captain Cook ; and as their journey ends, 
in strange rhythm, but sweetly, they are singing a song. 
Beside the lagoon, as I walk, stands a woman wailing 
bitterly. Her man is dead, she sobs, and she points to 
a boat even now sailing through the channel in the reef. 



THE SOUTH SEAS S97 

It carries the body over to Moorea, behind whose moun- 
tains the sun is setting in splendour. 

When it is dark, canoes cross the lagoon to the fishing 
grounds, inside the reef, where presently a number of 
bobbing lights appear; these attract the fish to them, 
where the fishers wait with poised spears. Saturday is 
a big fishing night, Sunday's market being the market of 
the week. This opens before five in the morning, in the 
darkness, when you may see the Chinamen standing be- 
fore their fresh pork and their vegetables, and the fisher- 
men, straight from the reef, with strings of strange- 
looking fish. On my way back from Sunday's market, 
at six o'clock, I used to see the Catholics entering their 
church. The island had been apportioned between these 
and the French protestants ; but in Papeete itself the two 
American sects of the Mormons, hating each other with 
bitter hate, but loving all others, now carried on propa- 
ganda. They are extraordinary, these Mormons — crude, 
unkempt, strongly determined, denying themselves even 
tea and coffee, facing often great hardships. A Mormon 
woman told me how, in a space of eight feet by six, 
aboard a schooner, whites and blacks had lain across one 
another for days, in an ecstasy of retching, praying for 
the end of the world. 

The end of the world! The Seventh Day Adventists, 
another sect, passing from island to island, have an- 
nounced it for this generation. As I sailed from Moorea 
to Tahiti, one of their missionaries engaged me in talk. 
He read me prophecies from the book of Daniel, and 
deduced from them the imminence of the Second Coming. 
He gtcaranteed it. He implored me to keep Saturday as 
the Lord's Day. If I did so, I was not to see death, but 
would be caught up with a multitude to heaven. 

Wandering round Tahiti, I became the guest of a head- 
man, or chief, near the far end of the island, staying 



298 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

with him two weeks. His wooden house stood by the sea. 
Each dawn, the twittering of hundreds of minahs in the 
breadfruit trees roused me, and I went out. The main 
mas3 of Tahiti lay across a bay, utterly soft and blue in 
the dawn, no vestige of rainclouds yet resting on her. 
A breeze stirred in the cocoanuts. I saw that about each 
tree, a few feet from the ground, a band of zinc was 
bound — a, foil to the island's bold and voracious rats. 
Now would be heard the blowing of a melancholy conch, 
and the local Chinese baker drove up with horse and cart, 
leaving four long rolls of French-patterned bread. With 
this, coffee was presently served me, grown nearby, and 
extremely fine, together with the milk of cocoanuts, and 
sugar from an 'island estate. The chief and I ate on the 
verandah, his childless wife, and half dozen adopted 
children, eating under a thatched shelter adjacent. For 
dinner and supper there was fish and fowl, or perhaps a 
sucking pig, floating in grease and garlic that turned one's 
stomach, flanked with tare and plantain and sweet po- 
tato—dry and tasteless things ; but what with a pawpaw 
or avocado pear, the Chinaman's bread, and a bowl of 
coffee, I did none too badly. As we ate, the chief, speak- 
ing a little French, plied me with questions about the 
great world. "Was it true Martinique was more beauti- 
ful than Tahiti? But surely the serpents there made life 
dangerous? Was not Alaska chock full of salmon? Were 
there very large plantations in Europe? Were not dia- 
monds mined in the earth, and how much did cutting 
reduce them in size? And did I often visit the King of 
England?" After breakfast he worked in his vanilla 
patch, or took me in his canoe fishing. He set his nets 
upon the coral, inside the reef, in a depth of perhaps six 
feet. Gazing down here, I saw red fish, green fish with 
noses like parrots, black fish, fish striped like zebras, and 
schools of minnows bluer than the imaginings of any 



THE SOUTH SEAS «99 

Reckitt ; and when tfie catch was good, and they struggled 
together in the end of the net, the water flashed like an 
expanse of opal. We also went fishing for varo — the sea 
centipede. In shallow water, where the bottom was clay, 
you saw the hole, two or three inches wide; into which 
you lowered a baited nest of hooks, flicked the water to 
attract the varo's attention, and waited. Presently there 
came a tug, a subterranean struggle, and you slowly pulled 
out, nearly a foot long, that which was a centipede to the 
eye on one side, a super-prawn on the other, yet when 
cooked was sweeter than any lobster, and the most lus- 
cious and bizarre eating known to man. On Sunday we 
went to the Protestant church. Before the native pastoi 
ascended the pulpit, he shook hands with the chief and 
his foreign visitor, nor did he forget to mention me in his 
prayers. He had a good face and manner ; but what with 
the inattention, the talking, and the sleeping, the babies 
crying, and their mothers carrying them out, the kingdom 
of heaven did not advance appreciably. The congregation 
wore their finery. The women, reputed for their looks, 
wore European dresses, straw hats, and their black hair 
hung in two long plaits down the back; they seemed 
coarse and fat, their bare feet and ankles the most un- 
gainly I had ever seen. But men and women were kindly 
and welcoming. 

That evening, along the coast, some two hundred people 
assembled for singing — the Tahitian's great social pleas- 
ure. They sang in chorus, with zest, a female soloist ever 
and anon striking some notes in a strained alto, the rest 
keeping up a repetitive — rhythmic, and in fine harmony. 
They were to sing all night. They asked me if I would 
sing them an English hymn. I did not remember any, but 
I sang "Reuben ! Reuben !'* and pleased them very much. 
At eleven o'clock, after three hours of it, I prepared to 



800 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

depart. Outside the singing booth, some young men were 
dancing the lascivious and prohibited hula-hula, to an ap- 
preciating audience, and one saw that amongst all the 
younger people who crowded round sexual excitement 
was rampant. Suddenly an old man rushed from the 
singer's booth, reproving the dancers with a flow of 
words, scattering the young folk who watched them, cast- 
ing a chill upon the amorous air. His breast was swell- 
ing with moral zeal ; yet, did this remote islander but know 
it, his zeal was jealousy. I said an old man, for whether 
it be in Tahiti or Twickenham, it is always the elderly and 
worn-out males who are the denouncers of sexuality, al- 
ways the young and lusty who are the denounced. The 
old men think it is reformation — ^the Holy Ghost work- 
ing in them; their letters to the Times picture a hid- 
eous underworld of sex. But let them search their hearts ! 
You will find, nine times in ten, that in youth these 
elderly males were as other men, and gave their passions 
rein. And if they only knew it, there is no need for fear; 
Anno Domini will reform the other fellow, even as it 
reformed them. I am not approving loose morals. Far 
from it Wantonness, promiscuity, is ever nasty ; but the 
sexual instinct, the strongest given to man, is not for the 
diatribes of the old and the puling. 

Among women, it is the sexually unsatisfied, a great 
army, who most fiercely denounce an erring sister. This, 
too, is jealousy; yet one feels a profound pity for those 
milHons of women who, because of convention, or the 
selfishness of parents, or more than all, our economic 
system, are denied their instincts toward love and mother- 
hood. Economics, did we but realise it, dog the woman 
at each step ; note, for example, how they colour the whole 
question of the illegitimate. When the erring daughter 
returns home, it is her father's instinct to take her to his 



THE SOUTH SEAS 801 

bosom; but when she goes out into the snow, and leads 
in the cause of all the trouble, in his velveteen suit and 
fauntleroy collar — it is then the father sees red. An- 
other to be fed and clothed and sent to school ! Another 
hundred a year gone up the chimney! It is then, and 
only then, simulating an outraged morality, that he rends 
his daughter with a solemn curse. 

With their emancipation, and the passing of creeds and 
dogmas, women will shake off many of their sexual tram- 
mels. As the priest steps out of the door, the lover will 
often come in by the window ; in other words, an increas- 
ing number of women will decide that this present life is 
the time for living and loving. Collectively, women will 
never give way to vulgar licence; nature, guarantor for 
the next generation, will see to that. Nor will the deep 
instinct for motherhood ever wither. Our system of mar- 
riage will no doubt continue ; but the day is coming when 
we shall say that a love-child, the offspring of healthy, 
primaeval passion, is more legitimate in Nature's eyes than 
the progeny of half the fashionable unions at St. George's, 
Hanover Square. 

In these days of hypocrisy and prurience, without pal- 
liating licence, this must needs be said: there are worse 
things than healthy sexuality — some worse things sex- 
ually, and many worse things ethically. With a vast ex- 
perience of men and women, I will tell you this: that a 
mean man is farther from our mother, Nature, than a 
rake, and a slanderous woman farther than a Magdalen. 

Where was I? ... In Tahiti: as I passed at eight 
o'clock next morning, the singers and dancers were just 
dispersing. 

A school with seventy scholars, where two native 
women taught, stood a stone's throw from the chief's. 
The hours, for so hot a climate, were sensibly short. 



SOa THIS WORLD OF OURS 

Rushing out for their long intervals of play, one saw the 
boys climb into a banyan tree, where hung ripening many 
bunches of bananas, and upon these, and oranges and 
mangoes, they gorged unceasingly. Under this banyan a 
man worked, hollowing a canoe from a tree trunk, while a 
few yards distant a colony of land crabs peered at us 
from their holes. I held athletic sports, which the school 
children carried through with a great zest. Other days 
we played at soldiers, drilling and charging, and a pelting 
battle with immature cocoanuts. Such intelligent little 
creatures, both native and half-caste Chinese, I had never 
seen. One of them made an effective telephone. Another 
fashioned a motor car in the sand, and with odds and ends 
imitated its parts, and its noises, with a diabolical clever- 
ness. So we played at telephones and motor cars on the 
Tahiti beach, and at soldiers, and at motor cars again, 
for day after day ; and when I gave the chief my presents, 
and departed, the children wove a garland of blossoms, 
and placed it on my head. 

From Tahiti I sailed to Makatea, in the Paumotus 
group, where a French company was working the phos- 
phates. An island about five miles long was disclosed, 
with coraHine cliffs of limestone, rising up 250 feet; as 
we drew nearer, one saw upon the steep slope that which 
looked like the loo-stamp mill of some gold mine. 

A few years ago Makatea had been but a valueless 
speck upon the waters, covered with a low forest, and 
with cocoanuts. Then one day there landed upon it some 
nosing individual, chipping here and digging there ; as he 
chipped, deposits of phosphates were revealed, and by 
analogy, Makatea had become worth something like a 
million pounds. The analogy was with Christmas Island, 
south of Java, which greatly enriched its owner; and 
with Ocean Island, Nauru, and Auguar, in the Pacific, 



THE SOUTH SEAS SOS 

which were greatly enriching theirs ; these being the prin- 
cipal deposits so far discovered.* 

The phosphate is a transformed limestone, whose or- 
igin, most chemists consider, was guano, and it is found 
lying wedged in masses among the coral rocks, to a depth 
of twenty feet or more. This is blasted out, crushed, 
dried, and sold f .o.b. at a handsome profit ; so handsome^ 
that a small island, carrying a few million tons of it, be- 
comes a potential asset of the first magnitude. The raw 
material is finally treated by sulphuric acid; becoming 
thus a super-phosphate, in world-wide demand as a fer- 
tilizer. 

We drew in close to the island, and anchored to a buoy^ 
the depth of water here, a stone's throw from the shore, 
being 240 fathoms. The great plant upon the cliff-side 
was worked by Japanese, and the crushed phosphate car- 
ried out to waiting vessels by a fleet of lighters. 

A small number of natives live upon Makatea. I en- 
countered one of these, who carried home for his dinner 
two cocoanut crabs. These crabs climb the cocoanut trees ; 
with their powerful claws they cut off the nuts, which 
are broken open in their fall, and having thus prepared 
a meal, descend with deliberation to eat it. Their flesh 
becomes extremely rich and oily, but is relished by the 
natives. 

Far to the West, in this South Pacific, lies Norfolk 
Island, six miles long, discovered by Captain Cook — an 
idyllic spot in a mellow clime. Early in the eighteenth 
hundreds this island was turned by Britain into a convict 
settlement. The convicts, degraded to the level of beasts, 
were treated as beasts ; men went to their daily toil yoked 

* Ocean Island, in the Gilbert group, just South of the Equator, 
is officially stated to have 1500 acres of phosphates. In the year 
1913, 203,000 tons were sold, for about 30/- a ton. Nauru, or 
Pleasant Island, 150 miles distant, has been officially estimated to 
carry 41,000,000 tons of phosphates. 



S04 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

together like bullocks. The warders, even the officers 
over them, were often viler, more innately brutal than 
the convicts; it is indeed certain that they goaded many 
a man to suicide, and many a man to murder, so that he 
should escape from this earthly hell by hanging. 

In course of time alleviations came. Certain of the con- 
victs, earning ticket-of -leave, were enabled to take up land 
on the island, marry, and lead human lives. In the fifties, 
it was decided to remove the establishment to Tasmania. 
Thither the convicts were transferred to prisons, and the 
good-conduct men, with their families, to a beautiful spot 
on the North bank of the Derwent River, which they 
named New Norfolk. In the Bush Inn at New Norfolk, 
a few years later, the opera Maritana, with its melody, 
"Scenes that are brightest," was composed. 

In 1856, as the last of the convicts left Norfolk Island, 
there arrived a strange community, numbering 194 per- 
sons. These were the descendants of those sailors of 
H.M.S. "Bounty" who mutinied in 1789, and sailed away 
with Tahiti women to live on Pitcairn Island. Pitcairn, 
only a mile long, was now become too small, and its com- 
munity, petitioning Queen Victoria for a larger island, 
had been brought to Norfolk. Thirty families arrived. 
Those who composed them were cousins many times over, 
and bore among them just eight surnames : Christian, 
Qtiintall, McCoy, Adams and Young were the names of 
mutineers ; Evans, Buffett and Nobbs sprang from three 
men who had reached Pitcairn at a later date. Each 
family was allotted fifty acres, together with live stock; 
and what with the land, the fruit growing wild, and a 
sea swarming with fish, was assured of plenty. Most 
of the 194 settled down on Norfolk. But there had been 
some who bitterly resented leaving Pitcairn, and these, to 
the number of forty, returned there after several years, 
where their descendants still live. 



THE SOUTH SEAS 305 

A little steamer, sailing out of Sydney, calls in at Nor- 
folk Island once in five weeks. There is no harbour ; the 
red cliffs, at whose feet the waves break heavily, whose 
summits are crowned with pine trees, do not indicate even 
a landing place. But as you round the South of the 
island, you see it — a beach, and a grassy expanse, half- 
covered with the old buildings of the convict establish- 
ment. A whale boat, rowed by the islanders, took me 
ashore. There was a bar, and a heavy surf breaking; 
I landed behind the breakwater which the convicts had 
built. 

Some sixty years had passed since the Pitcairn Island- 
ers came to Norfolk. The grandchildren of the ''Bounty" 
men were now the great-great-grandchildren; the com- 
munity was grown to 650 souls. A station of the Pacific 
Cable was now located on the island, also the headquarters 
of the Melanesian Mission. 

It was mail day — the monthly event. A short distance 
from the breakwater, behind the ruins of the convict 
prison, stood the old of^cers' quarters, turned into a Post 
Office, and here the island was congregating. There were 
bare-footed children, who had walked, but the grown 
people came riding down, or drove a shaggy horse in a 
sulky. The uncouthly moving men, some of them bare- 
foot, the women in garish, old-fashioned finery and sun- 
bonnets, the shaggy tethered horses cropping the grass, 
the quaint vehicles, the stately old building, and the hills 
behind with the pine trees, might have been a Virginia 
Court-house scene in the years round about 1650. 

In-breeding has brought some evil effects to the com- 
munity; but to a casual glance they seemed well set up, 
not bad looking, nor did the blood of the Tahiti women, 
which flows in all their veins, show otherwise, except in a 
few faces, than in a rather elegant swarthiness. A bare- 



306 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

footed, unkempt, yet sturdy man, seventy years old, vol- 
unteered to drive me over the island. 

He said: 'I'm an Evans — not a Bounty man, but my 
wife was a Quintall. Her great-grandmother told her 
about the mutiny. Mr. Christian — ^that was the officer 
— was driven so miserable by Bligh, that he was near 
committing suicide. Just then, as he paced the deck, he 
heard a voice saying *Take the ship !' He looked round, 
but could see no one. A few minutes later he again heard 
the voice whispering 'Take the ship !' and he saw Quintall 
leaning out of the fo'c'sle. And that's how the mutiny 
began." 

We had driven up the hill, to the main level of the 
island, and entered an avenue of araucaria pines, of which 
there are groves all over Norfolk. Presently we came to 
the Melanesian Mission. Here a hundred youths, from 
the Solomon and the Banks groups, are trained as native 
teachers, and return to their islands to spread the gospel. 

The pride of the Mission is a memorial chapel to Bishop 
Patteson; in its way a gem. The windows are stained 
glass, the wood-work of the pews inlaid with mother-of- 
pearl, the floor of marble; there is a reredos which came 
all the way from Torquay, and a brass tablet to Bishop 
Selwyn, the Mission's founder. Before the place of each 
Solomon Islander lay a daintily bound prayer-book and 
hymnal, in the Motu tongue. 

As my barefoot host drove me to his own cottage, we 
passed numerous homesteads. Here lived a Christian, 
here a McCoy, and over there, under the pines, a Buffett. 
Qose to three houses of the Adams family, stood the 
island school ; the children rode to it each day, tethering 
their horses in a nearby meadow. The houses were simple 
cottages of wood, standing beneath old trees, flowers in 
the gardens, and oleanders in bloom. In their meadows, 
horses and cattle grazed, poultry scratched, and I saw 



THE SOUTH SEAS SOT 

fine broods of turkeys. Lemons, oranges and guavas 
seemed to grow wild. Flocks of blue pigeons flew up 
from the streams, and a few brilliant parrots. Each vista 
was rounded off by the pine trees, and through them 
sometimes lay a glint of the sea. 

My host had arrived at Norfolk as a boy, and was 
one of the few remaining Pitcairn-bom. He took me to 
see another of these — a very old woman — who set before 
me tea and bread and butter in the courtliest way imag- 
inable. Then we went to the cemetery. At its far end 
were the brown old headstones of the convict days, now 
hardly legible — of officers, soldiers, warders, and their 
wives, the greater part Irish, who had died, or been 
drowned, or been murdered by some despairing convict, 
so that he might get hanged. The convicts themselves 
lay outside the fence — outside holy ground — a mound be- 
tween the seashore and the turf denoting where their 
bodies had been dumped. The nearer half of the cemetery 
held the graves of the Pitcairn people, their headstones 
of white marble coming all the way from New Zealand ; 
and one saw, again and again, the eight surnames set out, 
followed by some promissory text from the Scriptures.* 
Old pines stood on the slopes above, and the waters of 
the Pacific were lapping a stone's throw away; in these 
two acres of burial ground is unrolled all the history of 
Norfolk Island. 

When the French Govemm.ent sent no more convicts 
to New Caledonia, and it was realised that the mineral 

♦This, for example: — 

Sacred to the Memory of 

Charles Driver Christian 

Choirmaster 

at Pitcairn and here 

Who departed this life 

October 22nd, 1906 

Aged n 

"He hath put a new song in my mouth." 



308 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

wealth of this considerable island had largely been signed 
away to capitalists who were not prepared to work it, 
many of the French who had gone out and settled there 
moved away. Certain of them passed on to the New 
Hebrides, the nearest group of islands to the East, where 
they found a number of their countrymen, together with 
a certain number of British, but no flag. But the blessed 
word "Condominium" was on every lip, and presently the 
islands appeared under the joint government of France 
and England; with one Court of Law, but with two of 
everything else like a troicsseau — two flags, two Resi- 
dents, two staffs, two sets of stamps, two religions, and 
two methods of earning the liking or hate of the abo- 
rigines. Some six hundred French, and three hundred 
British — officials, planters, traders, and missionaries — 
came under the Condominium, as from November 15, 
1910. 

When at a certain dawn, I found myself anchored in 
the harbour of Vila my ignorance of this group burst 
upon me. The New Hebrides! What did I know of 
them? Only that Presbyterian missions were established 
there, and that the Rev. Dr. Paton had wrestled with 
the heathen on Tanna. I looked that island up on the 
Admiralty chart. This other, where I was anchored, was 
Efate, and this settlement of Vila the capital of the 
group. We were in the tropics. The wooded hills which 
rose about the harbour were densely green, exquisite in 
the sunrise; this might have been an island in the Carib- 
bean Sea. 

The small settlement lay facing us — some fifty houses 
along the beach and on the hills behind. One of these 
was the house of the French Resident, another the Con- 
dominium Court, another the joint Post Office. Two 
small islands rose in the bay. Upon one stood the British 
Residency, where our flag was presently hoisted, and the 



THE SOUTH SEAS 309 

British Hospital. On the other stood the prim buildings 
of a Presbyterian mission. A dozen island schooners, 
lying up for the hurricane season, rode at anchor. There 
are half a dozen traders' stores, French and British in 
Vila. Little spasms of trading take place before and 
after the heat of the day, but in the hot hours there is not 
a customer to be seen. The natives are asleep. The 
French go to their breakfast soon after eleven. Early in 
the afternoon French matrons sit by their doors seeking 
a breeze ; they are in island negligee, and plainly have put 
on flesh. The offices close early. As the British Resi- 
dency on the little island, there will probably be lawn- 
tennis after four o'clock. The Condominium Court sits 
twice a week. At nine in the morning, on a cry from the 
bailiff, the French and British Judges enter, and seat 
themselves. Between them sits the President^ a neutral, 
who at the time of my visit was a Dutch jurist. They 
are conventionally garbed. Important trials have been 
held here, and native murderers have heard the death sen- 
tence read out in French and English; but on this day 
nothing more heinous presented itself than some strayed 
horses. The bailiff of the court, a Frenchman, called 
loudly the names of several natives, who stepped forward, 
admitted the soft impeachment, and were sentenced, in the 
two tongues, to be fined Fr. i each, with costs. Still 
another horse had been straying, and this time the bailiff 
himself stepped to the well of the Court. A broad smile 
sat upon the President's face as he passed sentence. 

This island may be twenty miles across, but the in- 
terior, as with the rest of the group, is not opened up. 
There is nothing like a metalled road, and the tracks 
which lead from the settlement end at some nearby cocoa- 
nut plantation. Cocoanuts are the staple of the New 
Hebrides, copra the chief export. These islands are 
mountainous, overlain with forests ; the volcanoes on Am- 



310 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

brym, Lopevi, and Tanna are still seen to smoke. About 
thirty of the islands are inhabited. The most populous 
is Malekula, with fifteen thousand natives; but as in so 
many parts of the Pacific, they are fast dying out. A 
trader on one of these had occasion to verify the signa- 
tures to a transfer of land. Twelve men had signed the 
deed, eight years before ; but when he went to their vil- 
lage, he told me, all of them were dead. They die from 
consumption, malaria, the white man's drink, the white 
mian's syphilis, and such epidemics as measles; but in 
the main these races are dying because they have not the 
will to live. Each island has its different tribe, each tribe 
its language. On Malekula live the most confirmed can- 
nibals — now that the Fijians have become Methodists — in 
the South Seas. 

The largest island of the New Hebrides is Santo, sev- 
enty miles by forty. On its east coast lie French planta- 
tions, yet its mountainous interior remains an unexplored 
forest, the haunt of cannibals. At its mouth end, little 
more than a stone's throw from the mainland, is the 
island of Tangoa, a mile long, and the site, for many 
years past, of a Presbyterian mission. Here native teach- 
ers are trained. In return for their keep, they have given 
their labour, so that the slopes of Tangoa have turned 
from jungle to a grassy park, where milch cows are 
grazing, and upon the crest, in a garden, stands the well- 
built house of the missionary, with fowls and turkeys 
about it, and a cooing of pigeons in the trees. 

I entered it, and so passed to my own country. North 
of the Tweed. So Scottish, nay, so primly Presbyterian 
an atmosphere, on a small tropical island hard over 
against the cannibal forests, lay beyond the bounds of 
fancy — yet here it was! The missionary and his wife 
were Aberdeen. They had been here twenty years, yet 
there was no mistaking the real Mackay. It exuded with 



THE SOUTH SEAS 311 

every uttered word, as did a great kindliness. Moreover, 
it was the afternoon of the Sabbath ; no work was being 
done; speech and gesture were strictly modified. Other 
missionaries and their wives were present; I closed my 
eyes, and thought it was the General Assembly ; this prim 
room was furnished to the taste of a Moderator; the 
prints upon the walls were decorous, Presbyterian prints ; 
the first volimie on the shelf to catch my eye was "The 
Life of Principal Rainy." We talked of missions, and 
the recent eating of a white man, and of missions again, 
until the dark, sitting down to a Scotch tea, with boiled 
eggs to our tea, and gingerbread. Afterwards a bell 
tolled, and we walked a hundred yards to the mission 
hall, for the evening service. A matter of seventy na- 
tives, the men who were being trained, sat on the benches, 
and a dozen of their women, with infants at the breast, 
sat at the side, apart. After an opening prayer by the 
missionary, the natives took over the service. Hymns 
were given out; they were sung at a high pitch, with a 
straining of voices. A native, rising in his place, read 
the verses about the rich man and Lazarus, and at- 
tempted, in passable English, to preach therefrom. 

I did not follow him. I was thinking of all I had seen 
that day — the idyllic beauty of this small island, the blue 
strip of water separating it from the mainland, the moun- 
tains of Santo, with their forests and cannibals, and the 
fantastic illusion of being back in Scotland. I thought of 
this mission — of all the missions I had seen in the South 
Seas. What a welter of creeds! What a passing, from 
island to island, of bearded men and spectacled women 
— good and determined people, as like as not, enduring 
much hardship! It seemed to me that their efforts ap- 
proached completion, that the South Seas neared the 
saturation point; they would soon hold all the religion 
they could carry. Some day, I thought, when the coloured 



312 THIS WORLD OF OURS 

races of the world are full of Christianity, these same 
coloured ones will join together, and undertake the great- 
est foreign mission of all times. This will be a mission 
to — England; a mission to cleanse her slums, to im- 
prove the surroundings of the poor; a mission to take 
drink by the throat, and strangle it as a vested interest ; 
a mission to the rich and the caste-bound, so that the 
scales shall fall from their eyes; a mission to the churches, 
that they shall cease their wrangling, their oriental genu- 
flexions, their turning of the white of the eye upward, 
and shall strive to make this known world a litter place. 
I could already see, in my mind*s eye, the great opening 
festival ; and in my ears was the shout of the immense col- 
oured chorus : 

"They call us to deliver 
Their land from error's chain." 

The Sunday night's service was ending. While the sev- 
enty raucous voices sang "Abide with me," my thoughts 
returned to the mission room, and a sadness fell upon 
me. In a hundred years, very likely in far less, these 
races would have ceased to exist, and the islands which 
now knew them, would know them no more. The mis- 
sionaries did what they were able. They brought a glim- 
mering to primitive brains. They combatted the traffic in 
liquor. But they could do nought against the immutable 
decree of nature. In a hundred years these islands would 
be oriental — Indian, or Chinese, or probably Japanese. 
Most of the forests would be gone, and thousands of 
Japanese and Chinese cooHes would extract from the 
soil a great fertility. The face of Santo would be 
changed. These comfortable Presbyterian days on Tan- 
goa gone beyond recollection. Where the bell had called 
the mission to prayers, a brazen gong would sound, a 
smell of incense rise up, a yellow-robed priest enter a 



THE SOUTH SEAS 313 

Buddhist temple, and all things proclaim a new heaven 
and a new earth. 

The book is finished, and I lay down my pen ; but with 
no exulting. I have done what I set out as a boy to do, 
seen everything, travelled nearly a million miles — ^and 
lost my way. I have seen the Whole World, and have no 
notion what it all means. 

Two things I grasp. The one is the beauty and glamour 
of the World; if I could live in that glamour, life would 
be what it is sometimes in dreams. The other is the 
horror — ^the crazy, unmeaning horror — of the same 
World ; like the beauty and glamour, it is part of the very 
scheme of things. 

In men, too, as in Nature, these opposites — the good 
and the evil — are ever there, the one always balancing the 
other; the deeper I reason, the deeper I find the bal- 
ancing to lie. 

That is the only meaning I can read into things. If 
it is the beginning of interpretation, it is yet so vague, 
so obfuscating, that I can only say "I have lost my way." 
We have all done so, did men but know it. Our life- 
journey leads but into a dense fog; let us, therefore, when 
we meet each other for a moment in the mist, pass the 
time of day with kind words and a smile. 



THE ENd 



